


Metroid Saga: Genesis

by Mental_Omega



Series: Metroid: Saga [1]
Category: Metroid Series
Genre: Alien Character(s), Aliens, Anarchist & Marxist dynamic, Child Abuse, Coming of Age, Exploration, Gen, Growing Up, Military Jargon, Multi, Origin Story, Original Character(s), Orphans, Pansexual Character, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Robots, Samus is pan, Science Fiction, Space Battles, Sylux is pan, War Crimes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-01
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:07:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 22
Words: 242,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21628858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mental_Omega/pseuds/Mental_Omega
Summary: The first installment in a reimagining of Metroid; here we start with the beginnings of the universe's two greatest warriors; Samus and Sylux. The Hatchling and the Neophyte. Born of K-2L and Cylosis, and bound by fate to decide the destiny of the cosmos.All comments & feedback welcome. Even the silly ones.
Series: Metroid: Saga [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1558888
Comments: 4
Kudos: 19





	1. Sunset on K-2L

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Sylux Neophyte](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/539152) by Tyrannolodon. 



> This story's going to alternate between two protagonists. Chapters concerning Samus Aran; the Huntress will be marked with (SA). Chapters focused on Arne Skjoldr; who will one day become Sylux; will be marked with (AS). Chapters focused on neither will not be marked with initials. 
> 
> A long time ago I read one guy's metroid fanfic for their conceptualization of Sylux's Origin story. A somewhat less long time ago I collaborated with them on their somewhat abortive remake of that. Now I'm trying my own hand at it, and I'm hoping to drag you all along for the ride!

_Aethlan Mines, Sidhemor, K-2L, Vercengetorix-6886, Macha Nebula, Whirlpool Galaxy._

  
"Alright folks time to wind things down and take sixty. Don't hurt yourselves on my account." Rodney Aran said, as the sun of the recently settled planet hung at its apex in the sky, giving the air a brilliant blue hue interrupted by the occasional clouds.  
  
"I'm telling you Aran, we're screwed the second they step up Fuel Gel extraction on Thrushin." One of the drone foremen said, raising her AR visor and sighing as her work drones went about their last programmed actions, ensuring that the carts emerging from the mine shafts were properly sealed. Elendrina was one of the Aelvia, her elfin features gracile and soft, but still quite close to human. Her purple eyes blinked rapidly before she rubbed them, a clear sign of staring at screens for too long without blinking.  
  
"Don't worry about it too much. I've brought that up with the General Executive Board, with any luck the Association will get us posted in Fuel Gel ops before things get bad. Besides, there's still some demand for this stuff." He said, giving her a reassuring look.  
  
A handsome blonde man, Rodney had risen to a foreman posting before even hitting twenty five, with the lack of protective gear he had on a clear indication that he spent most of his time in management work. He tapped some info into a holographic screen projected from his bracelet and once he was done had a look around. Most of the workers were now sitting down and unpacking their lunches from sealed storage, moving into shaded areas to escape the glare of the star Vercengetorix-6886.  
  
The growling of his own stomach warned him that he had been neglecting his own needs however, and he sighed as he realised he hadn't packed anything again. He checked his pockets shortly afterwards, no he hadn't brought any ration bars either.  
  
He ran through his options, thinking about what he might ask for at the cafeteria. He definitely needed something calorie dense if he was going to pull another all nighter. Some counter-fatigue medications would also banish his body's urge to sleep.  
  
Who knows where society would be if they hadn't found a way to cure sleep deprivation? While generally not used by a still sceptical military, they'd been a life saver for him on so many days. Seems like today might need some more.  
  
But as he was lost in thought, a packed container was moved in front of his face. He looked up from the slender hand holding it and locked eyes with a lovely golden haired woman with eyes as blue as the ocean, who was giving him a sweet smile as she approached him; still dressed for housework.  
  
She was on the taller side, and kept her hair in a simple ponytail. Her blouse reached to about her ankles, and the fabric, blue and tan in colour; was clean. Almost immaculately so, she'd definitely not been outside for all that long then. Her boots were simple, chosen for comfort rather than fashion, and on her right hand was a ring matching his own.  
  
"Oh, I didn't expect you to be out of the house so early. Something up?" He asked, though he had a hunch about what she was going to say.  
  
"You forgot your lunch again Rodney, so I thought I'd pack you something more to your tastes than the cafeteria food. " She said, offering him the container as he felt slightly embarrassed before taking it into his hands.  
  
"You didn't need to do that Virginia. But thanks." He said, giving her a small smile.  
  
"You're working too hard. I asked that we join a co-op so that we could be more flexible with our schedules. But you haven't slept in your bed in weeks." She said, brushing something off his face with a wipe she produced from her long skirt's pockets.  
  
"The convoy's going to be here soon and we need to fill out orders," He said, sighing and rubbing his eyes.  
  
"You're not going to fill them out working yourself to death honey. The universe isn't going to end because my husband started practising what he preached and took some time off." She said, a somewhat coy look on her face as Rodney went from just about ready to argue to realizing he didn't have a counter and giving a resigned smile.  
  
"Yeah, sorry. I just need to feel useful." He said.  
  
"Your daughter needs you Rodney." She said softly as she leaned on his shoulder and sighed.  
  
"Promise me you'll spend more time with her?" She said.  
  
"I...yeah, I promise." He said as he brought a hand around her and gave her a bit of a squeeze.  
  
"Besides, you want her to have siblings, don't you? Can't do that when you're busy at the site every day." She said with a grin that he met with a peck on her lips as he pulled her in tighter.  
  
"Well, I guess we have sixty minutes to spend if you want to get a headstart on that. Just as long as you're sure she's fine." He said  
  
"She's in the safest place she can be." She said, smirking as Rodney pulled her towards a more private place.  
  
  


_Neorai Forests, K-2L_

  
  
  
"Come on, give it back! That's not yours!" A small girl shouted at a creature that looked like nothing more than the fruit of a rabbit and a squirrel's illicit dalliances that currently had her backpack firmly in its hands.

She tried to jump at it, but was not quite nimble enough to catch the animal which was always able to avoid her whenever she jumped up at where the animal lay. Her short blonde hair gleamed a bit in the sunlight that poked through the branches, and her intense blue eyes tried to make out what the Rabil was doing with her stuff. 

"Come on, bad boy! Get down heeere!" She protested, trying to jump once again. But once again she got nothing for her efforts but a stare as the Rabil simply darted away from her and nestled on another branch. The Rabil didn't run away at least, that would make chasing it at least a thousand times more irksome.  
"Ugh, come on, you stink! Get down here already!" She grumbled as she looked around. There had to be some way to get up there to the Rabil's level. She eyed the area, looking for something to climb on and get a better vantage point. But before she could think on a way of how to climb up the tree to get at her stuff, two other kids came running in.  
  
"Samus! Samus! Look, look there's a new ship coming!" One of the boys, Jacen said, trying to point to the sky as a shape slid through it. It was rather like a pyramid that had a series of minarets attached to it, seemingly archaic but the blue glow of its engines and its flickering fields as it rearranged the clouds so that it could descend with the sun behind it all pulsed with advanced technology even she could recognise as far beyond the usual visitors.  
  
"Eh? Who's in it?" She asked as she raised one of her hands to shield her eyes from the sun as the craft came to a sudden halt and started a rather gentle downward descent. It was clearly large, not the biggest ship she'd ever seen but definitely big enough for her to know it was important.  
  
"They said they were Chozo?" A girl, Aisha said, scratching at her chin as she looked at the craft in its moments before touchdown. Its legs extended and made sure its rooting was firm, and the craft hummed with energy and purpose.  
  
"Do you mean...new people...here?" She asked, tilting her head in curiosity. New people usually meant business from her parents or new colonists coming in. Which usually meant new friends to play with. She could feel her heart racing and bit her lower lips in anticipation.  
  
"Yeah!" Jacen said, and at that Samus' eyes lit up with curiosity as she decided to get moving as quickly as she could, starting her stop with almost a there were new people here then she had to see them.  
  
"I wanna see it!" She said, a grin appearing on her face as she promptly forgot about the backpack for the time being, running off in the direction of the ship. She had a head start ahead of the others already, but even then she was faster than most of the others.  
  
"Come on slowpokes!" She said, running somewhat ahead of the rest as she pushed herself as fast as her legs could go. Her friends could barely keep up, not as familiar with the layout of the landscape as she was as she sprinted.  
  
"Slow down! You're too fast!" Jacen shouted, but alas; she was always eager to be the first to see something new. She giggled mostly to herself as she ran ahead, devouring the distance between her and her goal faster than most would imagine a toddler could manage.  
  
  


_Gaela Landing Plaza, Sidehmor, K-2L_

  
  
  
A hooded figure seemed to materialise from the ether, followed by a handful of their comrades. Wearing brown robes decorated with trims of red and gold, these figures stood taller than humans. Leaner too.  
  
Each of the Chozo was somewhat different from the others, their cloaks fluttering while drones hovered around their heads. The light of eye pieces and visors that should have been visible through the hoods was shrouded by some manner of artificially generated shadow, and the air subtly shifted with the energies they commanded.  
  
The shortest amongst them, who seemed to have the posture of an old man with a cane whose fingers were clad in truly resplendent armor, carefully decorated with gently carved details formed around the claws of the gauntlet; spoke soon enough, rapping fingers that seemed almost insect-like in their great length and thinness.  
  
"I would like to request access to the Afloraltite you have stockpiled here if you are willing to do us the honours of sharing the bounties you have collected." He said, his voice kindly and avuncular, a reverb present within as if he were speaking from many throats.  
  
The one standing to his right, taller, thinner and seemingly less world-weary, with more greyish colouration to the armour visible through the openings in the fabric they wore rested his hands by his sides and took a moment to relax his fingers before speaking.  
  
"You will of course receive fair and just compensation for the trade. We are no thieves and you have clearly done great work to make the harvests that you have." The Grey one said.  
  
"And if possible, we wish to have access to this harvest immediately. We have works which we do not wish to delay." A third, female voice to the left of the old one, her armour more purple than her compatriot's said.  
  
"Uhh.." Elendrina said with the full breadth of the wit that she could muster when faced with a real, live Chozo in front of her.  
  
"You just want to take it?" Another worker, a synthetic by the name of Siegway said, their optics zooming in and then back out as if they weren't quite sure whether what was in front of them was real.  
  
"Please, do try to understand that this is for a good cause." The Old one said, turning his head slightly to the left, anticipating the presence of someone else arriving. Even before Rodney had stepped up to speak to the Old One, the Chozo's gaze was pointed directly at where he would be as he pulled down his hood.  
  
Beneath the hood was an ornate helm, wrapping around his beak and having two distinct red eyepieces through which he saw the world. He bore a simple headdress, a crest with which to indicate his status, and the red and gold helm seemed to bear an almost gentle countenance. He was tall of course, Rodney was one of the tallest humans in any given room and even he had to crane his neck upwards to meet the gaze of even the shortest of the gathered Chozo.  
  
The one to the left lowered her hood to show a helm with winged structures on each side, her helm purple and gold and her eyepieces a benevolent green. To his right, the tallest among them followed suit, his grey and red helm having something akin to the mane of a seahorse emerging from the back, raising however temporarily; the question of how such a protrusion was not noticeable when he had his hood up remaining impossible for Rodney to guess an answer to.  
  
"You are the foreman here, yes?" The one to the right asked.  
  
"Yeah, that would be me, R-"  
  
"Rodney Aran." He said, completing his sentence for him before turning to nod at Virginia as she straightened her top and stepped up to meet him.  
  
"And you would be Virginia. My apologies if I startled you, but I have been anticipating this meeting." He said, offering a small bow.  
  
"Then you'd know that we can't just hand some of our supplies over to you. We've got a convoy coming in expecting full stocks for transport elsewhere." Rodney said.  
  
"I'm aware, we will offer you what is just and fair your labours and to the convoys for your troubles. But it is quite important that we have access to these supplies. We are hoping that you will be understanding." The Old One said with a gracious bow.  
  
"Look, can we at least get an explanation as to why you need the Afloraltite? I might be able to make some arrangements if I had some answers." He said, sighing.  
  
"Please, if we just start making unarranged trades our reputations will suffer. Is there any way you could make the proper arrangements?" Virginia said, stepping up to speak to the Chozo who regarded her for a scant few moments before speaking.  
  
"This was on rather short notice, and you were the source with the most readily available supply of Afloraltite. Please do know that we are not fond of asking this burden of you, and we ask out of necessity, not desire." The Female Chozo said with an apologetic bow.  
  
"Are you certain there aren't any other places in the cosmos you could look for Afloraltite in?" She asked, trying to keep her gaze locked with the Chozo as he straightened himself and rapped his fingers against the handle of his cane.  
  
"Yes. This was the first place we sought to ask. Should you accept our request, we are willing to share some of our digging machines and refinement systems which you are certain to find immeasurably superior to your present systems. So that you may make up for lost harvests long before the Caravan ever arrives." The Grey one said, conjuring images of mighty diggernauts and strange machinery that caught the eye of the miners.  
  
"You still haven't answered our question." Virginia said, pursing her lips and remaining dead-on in her gaze. She wasn't going to flinch on this.  
  
"Yes, why do you need the Afloraltite?" Rodney asked, tapping his fingers together as he thought on his next response, trying to plan ahead lest he be caught by an unexpected turn.  
  
"We are seeking to expand our work on Zebes, and that requires additional afloraltite. Our synthetic efforts are promising, but we seek ample natural afloraltite to form a special mineral when combined with our artificial product." The female to the left said, seemingly truthfully and the Chozo were renown for their honest wisdom.  
  
"I...we...we're tempted but this is such a sudden offer, we aren't really certain of how to respond?" Virginia said, stammering a bit as she tried to find the words to say.  
  
"Could you give us some time to talk about this? We're...really overwhelmed that the Chozo would ask something like this of people like us." Rodney added, getting a nod of approval  
  
However, there was yet another newcomer pushing through the crowd, darting between the legs of the gathered people.  
  
Small hands pulled a small body up onto the Plaza, a small girl's voice called out to let her see what all the fuss was about, and then the head of the Old Chozo was found having already anticipated the exact spot where she'd arrive and she froze. She gulped and tried to approach all the same.  
  
"Samus, what are you doing here?" Rodney asked, his expression clearly somewhat concerned as he made a gesture to the Chozo to request a few moments with his daughter.  
  
"I wanted to see the ship papa." She said, chewing slightly on her thumbnail and looking to him for forgiveness.  
  
"Sorry." She said, looking at her feet and shifting them a bit nervously. She looked back at them and relaxed to see they weren't disappointed, just relieved.  
  
"You can stay, but you need to tell us where you go Samus." Virginia said as the two briefly pulled their daughter into a hug.  
  
"We need you to stay safe. You can wander, but make sure we can find you if you do. Can you understand that? You know we love you." He said, hoisting her up briefly and getting a giggle out of her before passing her to Virginia who gave her a small spin to get her excited.  
  
"Now, why were you scared? Is it because of them?" Virginia asked, getting a small nod out of Samus.  
  
"You don't need to be afraid of them Samus. They just want to talk about some things with mama and papa. Why don't you say hello to one of them?" She said before setting her down and giving her a little nudge forward, stepping back towards her husband and embracing him as the two watched her waddle forwards.  
  
"H-hello...I'm Samus Aran, three years old." She said, her knees slightly shaky from the attentions of the armoured ancient as he mentally directed the others to continue speaking and looked to the gathered adults for a few moments.  
  
"My apologies, I would very much like to speak to your child if you would be so gracious as to give me the chance." He said.  
  
"Samus." Virginia said, causing her to turn her head to her.  
  
"Just be careful with him. And remember to be polite." Rodney said, giving her a thumbs up and then nodding at the Old One.  
  
"Okay papa...mama what were you going to say?" She asked.  
  
"Be nice to him, please." She said simply before looking back at the other Chozo.  
  
"What's your name?" Samus whispered as the Old One kneeled down to her level.  
  
"I am Re-Sekh, but you can call me Old Bird, my friends there are Somek-Ka and Isa-Hesh; but if you like, you can call them Grey Voice and August Wing." He said, getting a nod of understanding out of the young girl.  
  
"How old are you?" She said in a small voice, her eyes wide with curiosity.  
  
"Very I'm afraid." He said with a small laugh.  
  
"Are you afraid of me?" He said, Samus at first trying to shake her head to say no before stopping herself and nodding yes.  
  
"You don't need to be. I may look different to you. But under all this, we have the same heart you and I." He said, letting his helmet dissipate into golden light to reveal his purple feathered head with segmented exoskeletal carapace on the neck, squat and wide like a parrot's but with strange, solid coloured eyes. His beak could not smile, but he spoke with a pleasant tone, and laid his hand attached to an incredibly lengthy, almost emaciated looking arm on his chest in a sincere gesture. Though he was far taller than she was, about half as tall again as her own father despite being the shortest of the Chozo there.  
  
"Are you really a bird?" She asked, relaxing and settling into the mindset of a thousand and one questions as most kids her age did.  
  
"Something like that, yet not quite. If you wish, you could call me one though." Knowing that she probably wasn't interested in getting a lecture about convergent evolution right about now.  
  
"If you would like. I wish to be your friend." He said, offering a hand to her.  
  
"Why?" She asked, curious rather than sceptical about his intentions.  
  
"Because making new friends is an important part of life for people like us Samus. And I'm sure you can show this old man many new things." He said, causing Samus to think about it for a moment before an idea dawned in her head as she tugged at his extended hand.  
  
"Come on! Come on! I want to show you something!" She said, causing the ancient to stand up and look to the other Chozo. "Please continue with the negotiations Somek, I'll be back shortly." He said as the other Chozo watched the event unfold.  
  
"Please be careful Samus! And don't forget to be home for dinner!" Virginia said, before looking pointedly at Rodney and quirking a brow as she tweaked his nose slightly.  
  
"Which goes for you too." She flashed him a coy grin.  
  
  


* * *

** Samus' Logbook Entries **

Planets: Whirlpool Galaxy: Macha Cluster: Human Habitable: Galactic Federation Controlled: Visited: K-2L (Part 1)

K-2L was once a small but growing colony world settled in Cosmic date 2095 (Earth date 13.04.49,995) by settlers originating from Earth seeking to make their fortune in the waning days of the Afloraltite boom. Though the rise of Fuel Gel as the zero-point energy catalyst of choice had been causing Afloraltite prices to wane, K-2L was well-positioned to become the seed of a major industrial world with its abundant mineral resources. The planet is the fourth from its star Vercengetorix-6886 and has a diameter roughly comparable to Earth with a similar land to sea ratio and temperature range. Like Earth, the planet's continents are split into two clusters of collided continents, making for six in total. Though no indigenous city building or tool crafting sapients have ever been observed, the native Rabils have been categorized as a sapient species. Its atmospheric composition has a moderately higher Oxygen content than Earth's, but well within comfortable ranges for humans with only standard genetic screening.

_Samus' notes:_

The thing that always stuck with me about K-2L was its lack of large predators and aggressive herbivores. I'm not sure why that sticks with me, maybe it's because every wild and uncharted celestial body I visit now has animal life that could feel safe attacking military units. But the idea that where it all began had nothing bigger than a common brown bear that had any interest in picking a fight always seemed...Ironic is the word I'm looking for yes?

Species: Fauna: Synapsidoid: Therapsidoid: Mammaloid: Lagamorphoid: Sapient: Rabil

A small endothermic and furred species akin to Earth lagomorphs, Rabils are renown for their sensitivity to the emotions of other species and their surprisingly high strength. Popular as pets, a population of domesticated Rabils created by genetically altering wild rabils with domestic traits was created within months of colonization and then shipped off-world to pet distributors across the cosmos. Rabils are largely docile herbivores, but will respond to aggression in kind if not left with any other option, and are both extremely fast and surprisingly strong due to having builds created for climbing and jumping.

_Samus' notes:_

It's a very good thing that they can wash themselves because I despair at the thought of trying to keep fur like that neat without mechanical aid.

Organizations: Businesses: Co-Operative: Mining: Sirian United Mining Group

Founded early in Cosmic Year 2010 (Earth date 18,383), the Sirian United Mining Group is one of the largest worker-owned mining industries within the Federation. With its ownership restricted to employees and its substantial wages and benefits, Sirian boasts high employee retention and satisfaction and has made its business on providing its services in multiple galaxies, with the Pinwheel Galaxy being considered its primary area of operation.

_Samus' notes:_

They mean well enough, but the direction of my life has taken me far from the miner's life.

Organizations: Labour Unions: Industrialist Unions: Red Unions: Intergalactic Worker's Association

The largest labour association in the cosmos, the IWA crosses multiple intergalactic lines and is renown for its firm principles of solidarity, widespread reach in nearly every industry, refusal to be beholden to any state even if they share political views such as the ODCOR, and hardline negotiation tactics. Strictly democratically organised as directly as possible, the IWA is controversial to some but others will swear by it.

_Samus' notes:_

Well worth the membership fees.

Cosmic Dating System

By mandate of the Galactic Federation, dates are ascribed to the Cosmic dating system which measures years by the reckoning of the Chozo calendar. Cosmic years are roughly equivalent to 346.855 Earth years, with year zero marking the conclusion of a tremendous "Forbidden war" with a foe simply recorded as "the legion of despair" or "the Old Foe". Dates are divided into day, week, month, with ten days to a week, twenty-four weeks to a month, and sixty-six months to a year with days being roughly 7.9 times longer than Earth days.

_Samus' notes_

Human ages are recorded by our own calendar. I was born on the Sixth of August of the year 50,000 but it's still the year 2095 by the cosmic calendar now. Humans entered space in Cosmic Year 1957, or 2134, and joined the Federation when it was founded in 2003; or 15,955. Yet that's all ancient history by now, almost forty-eight and more than thirty-four thousand years ago respectively. A dual dating system is more than practical enough for my needs however,

Substances: Energy Production: Zero Point Energy Catalysts: Afloraltite

Afloraltite Crystals were a catalyst for tapping into Zero point Energy of choice for the cosmos until the Akintoye-Zarakram process to utilise Fuel Gel as a catalyst instead was discovered in Cosmic Year 2095. Primarily taking the form of crystals, Afloraltite is still considered a valuable mineral; particularly for usage in the ignition module of starship N-Space drives, Star Warp accelerators, Mass Manipulation drives, or for Cosmo-Gates used to link locations together. Users should be cautioned of its explosive tendencies however.

_Samus' notes:_

It's funny, in a painful, ironic sort of way that is; how something that used to drive so much of a fuss in the cosmos is considered second stringer garbage now.


	2. Cylosian Dusk (AS)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Before Sylux was who we know him to be now, he was just a small boy on an out of the way planet. But what was on that planet would commit him to the course he is now; the Lightning Avenger and the last son of Cylosis.

_Himminsdag Mountains, Cylosis, Cyrus’ Expanse, Pinwheel Galaxy._

“Arne? Where are you.” Gyda Skjoldr asked as she looked around the snowswept mountain tops. Surrounded on all sides by rugged peaks, the woman and the soldiers she was leading pushed through the fierce winds blowing wisps of frost and the cold without any concern. Her visor set itself to thermal tracking mode, false colours displaying a sea of frigid purples, dark blues, and blacks but illuminating whatever heat sources there were. Her voice was firm but not harsh, she was calling to her son, after all, she couldn't be too firm.

“Sorry...I was looking.” Arne Skjoldr said, the platinum-haired boy waddling into her line of sight, her H.U.D marking his outline in green as she turned her head towards him. His boots kicked through heavy snow and his was frame lit up with warm yellows and oranges on her visor before she set the HUD back to visible light so she could see him as he actually was. Clad in his blue coloured insulative artificial fur rimmed jacket and dark blue snow pants and cleated boots. His nose cherry red from the cold. She let out a sigh of relief and kneeled down, laying her left gauntleted hand on his shoulder while he lowered his stuffed dinosaur toy slowly.

“Arne, what did I say about running off?” She said. With a thought, her fighter pilot like helmet's visor gleaming as the sun struck its polarised lenses. With a mental command, it disassembled and retracted into the rest of her gunmetal, crimson, and Prussian blue armour, her right hand found its way to his shoulder as the three-year-old adjusted his shirt. The finger claws on the gauntlets had been retracted for now, folding back into the vambraces so that the suit's fingers would be rounded and gentler while keeping her clan symbol of the crow grasping lightning unobscured. As a final touch, her suit’s flight assistance wings folded up into rest position near her suit's spaulders for the sake of comfort.

“Not to do it…” He said shyly.

“Good boy. There are a lot of people who want to hurt us, so you need to stay safe. Don’t get out of Sylan’s sight, okay?” She said, a small smile forming on her lips as their red eyes locked with one another. Her platinum hair; kept in a braid that went down to the middle of her back when freed from her helmet with swept bangs and cascades of hair framing the sides; gleamed somewhat in the light while her valkyrie like countenance studied her son’s expression, her marble toned skin seemingly soft even with the face paint she wore on her cheeks meant to represent crimson claw marks.

“Okay...but what if I f-” A finger was pressed to his lip before finding its way back to hers.

“It’s very important for you to do what mommy says for now. We can play later.” She said, smirking and standing back up, the knight like spaulders of her armour rolling with her shoulders as she extended a telescoping weapon stored on her back to its full length and made a quick whistle to get everyone moving, waiting for a dip in the wind's volume so that she could be heard by the procession of troopers behind her. The chest plate of her suit’s glowing red central light strobed briefly as she flexed the suit’s wings with a thought. In and out, she closed her eyes briefly and just listened to the wind for a few moments.

The Cylosian winds lashed at her long hair for a few moments before Erik emerged, his youthful face framed by the parka he was wearing over his opened helmet. He looked younger than he actually was, and his mid-neck length platinum hair had been somewhat tousled by the wind. He stashed away his werewolf gun and started moving quickly, his suit’s flight pack folding tightly against the rest of his armour.

“Did you find something honey?” He asked, running up to his wife after breaking cover and planting a kiss on her cheeks. She flushed slightly but pushed him back after returning the gesture.

“There’s a ship beneath there alright.” She said, pointing to the mountain with an extended digit.

“Well, yeah we knew that. But anything else?” He asked.

“Whatever’s in there is much older than most of the pre-Federation ruins here. Based on the geology, I’d say it’s a ship that crashed here about fifty thousand Earth years ago.” She said, looking back at Erik as he had a look himself and then turned back to her while Arne tried to stuff interesting looking rocks into his pockets. The mountain certainly didn't seem like it was entirely natural, too smooth, too perfect to be the work of natural erosion and geological processes he wagered. The one mountain that stood above all the rest, whose twisting peaks seemed almost to stab the sky itself.

“Think it’s worth having a division’s worth of scouts poke around the area for a month? Or screwing up your sleep schedule for even longer?” He said, giving a concerned look at her as she nodded gently. She blinked a few times to clear away some weariness as if to confirm his words, but let her suit quickly clear away the sensation of fatigue and seemed to almost shoot awake, inhaling and exhaling.

“I know you’ve been missing our time together, but this might be worth our while. We can make up once we’re done.” She said, laying a hand on his cheek and tilting her head.

“I know, but it’d be a shame to come here and only find some beat-up old piece of space junk. Besides, a man can hope for some more time with his wife can’t he?” He said, laying his hands on her hips. She responded to the gesture in kind, her hands resting atop his before slowly sliding up to his shoulders and towards his face, the other soldiers around them not paying them too much heed to their actions.

“Well he can, but if he’s just a little bit patient he’ll have exactly what he wants. And if this turns out to be something we can use to win some ongoing fronts well...I’m sure we’ll be able to find some way to celebrate hard enough.” She said, feathering some fingers across his chin, a wry smirk forming on her face as she looked down at him, tilting her head to the other side and giving him a coy wink.

“Are you gonna do the thing that makes babies?” Arne asked, getting a snort out of Gyda and a laugh out of Erik. Some of the other soldiers who had been nearby and were close enough to overhear Arne's question looked away and a few put their hands over the mouthpieces of their helmets. Sure enough, the comms were filled with attempts to avoid corpsing. Some more valiant than others based on the giggling that could be heard through the frequencies.

“Not right now, dad’s wearing a bit too much for that.” Gyda gave him a little grin as she gave her husband a little nudge to his shoulder that he leaned into.

But after stealing a kiss from him, shortly after she had pulled away she noticed Erik’s red-eyed gaze turning to his son and then looking back at her, clearly questioning. She had been having this particular argument with him time after time again and she almost seemed to slump as she sighed and started her explanation one last time.

“I didn’t feel safe keeping him back home. I'd prefer to keep him in my sight for a small expedition, and he needs to get out more anyway.” She said, sighing.

“...I mean you’re the warrior queen so I’ll trust you on that. I just hope we can pull him out of here if we have to do any revolutionary insurgency here. ” He said.

“Technically she’s just a clan champion. Albeit one of considerable repute. And she’s always had impeccable exfiltration capabilities” Sylan said, the synth walking into view while Gyda rolled her eyes as hard as they’d go.

The synth’s blue, yellow, and dark purple body was in rough humanoid shape, though they were currently being carried by a number of tentacles holding their primary body upwards, a function meant to increase their mobility as the two yellow coloured optics of the synth surveyed the landscape. With a somewhat feminine overall shape, Sylan’s profile was generally easy to make out as each of the arm thick and extendable tentacles stepped forward, claws grabbing purchase into the ground.

“Could the both of you stop tripping over yourselves to offer me praise?” She said, shaking her head before making a few hand gestures spotted by the rest of the group, all of whom emerged from their positions and moved silently towards the place she indicated.

“You sure we need to bring the runt?” A man with a skull-faced helmet said, his mass driver gun almost extending the whole length of his body. His armour was somewhat lighter than the others, his bionic right arm, pronounced left optic fitted with a scope monocle, and dramatic holo-cloak all serving to make him do the opposite of what you’d expect a sniper to do and stand out at this moment. The not-quite-human proportions of the armour hinted at his nature as an aquatic creature, the steps he made having a slight added weight from the water within the armour. His snout was somewhat elongated compared to most, and he was the only one Arne had never seen take off his helmet.

“Would be a shame if we had to feed him to some monsters inside eh?” He said, offering to ruffle Arne’s hair only for the young lad to clearly get spooked, dashing behind his mother’s legs.

“If you scare my boy I’ll feed you your gun Morr.” She said scornfully with a withering gaze. Morr flinched at the hard stare

“Mommy…” He whined as Sylan patted him on the shoulder, the dark blue and purple robot urging him to keep up with the group.

“Don’t mind Morr, he’s just an asshole.” She sneered, her helmet reconstructing itself around her face. The last to re-emerge were the wing-like antennae on the sides that marked her as an aerocommando, spreading outwards as if they were reaching for victory. But as the helmet resealed, the red visor of the helmet glowed briefly as it reactivated, an interested coo being heard from Arne who always found the armour construction process interesting.

The red eyepieces of Morr’s helmet glowed back before he snorted.

“Mom...what’s an asshole?” He hazarded to ask.

“Something you shouldn’t call people unless they’re very rude.” Sylan explained.

“Oh, does she not like Morr?”

“Tch, you kidding me?” Erik said with a chuckle.

“Yeah yeah yuck it up.” Morr grumbled as he zoomed in on the site with his helmet.

“Can't see shit besides some wildlife. Why bring the whole crew out for something like this and why the hush hush?” He said, shrugging as he saw feathery hexapods root around the mountain for tubers, shovel-like claws digging up precious food. Olgraps, a small herd of them busy making their lives in the mountainside, their shaggy downy coat ruffling slightly as some shook off accumulated snow.

“Because, urgilk[1] Morr; if the archaeologists’ guess is even half accurate we’re putting a target on this planet the second word gets out about what we’ve got here.” Erik said.

“Like we don’t already?” Gyda said with a wry grin.

“Do we have to hike all the god damn way?” Morr grumbled. Arne wasn't sure why he was complaining, he was wearing the special armour.

“I could throw you.” Lydyl said, the psychic deactivating their cloaking field and appearing next to Morr. Her digitigrade boots gripped into the rocky surface somewhat while her six-fingered hands flexed their digits. Her helmet lacked the distinctive winglets on Gyda and Erik’s, but overall her armour design was similar to that of her companions’.

“Nah, hard pass.” Morr said with a snort.

“This is Wyvern to Mountain; do you have an opening?” Gyda asked.

“Starting to really regret letting you call me Mountain, but yes. Bring the kid, he’ll be fine.” A deep, bassy voice replied.

“Sylan, take Arne, rest of you; high mobility mode.” She said, taking stock of the angles needed to make the jumps she was planning and immediately starting with a sprinting long jump that would have taken her clear over a stadium, bouncing immediately back into the air to grab a cliff face one-handed, yank herself up and jump again all in the space of an eyeblink. She didn’t activate her flight pack, fearing detection, but she virtually flew all the same.

“Can I open my eyes when you fly?” Arne asked as the synthetic held him tight, wrapping him in manipulator tendrils and fired off her repulsors, driving her into the sky while the rest of the team followed their commander.

In the space of about twelve seconds, they made it to the high point of the mountain, where a cavern was awaiting them. Arne’s face was now covered by an oxygen mask, and the warm clothes he was already wearing were sealed just a bit tighter to keep him cosy.

Gyda let her werewolf gun attach onto her right arm for greater comfort, looking around in either direction until the warm orange glow of a walking boulder alerted her to a foreign presence.

She raised a hand as the rest of the team arrived and the figure emerged, the light illuminating his figure. Almost half again as tall than even the tallest human and twice as broad as any man with a squat head; his enormous body sheathed in rocklike and crystalline mineral power armour and his right hand encased in a stalagmite like arm cannon with the left covered by an orb-like power fist that glowed like magma, his steps were seismically noticeable by the sensors in Gyda’s boots as she lowered her cannon.

“What do you have for me Spire?” She asked.

“It’s Alimbic alright. Much older than anything in their cluster over in the Tetra galaxy. Won’t lie, really wishing it was Diamont instead.” He sighed.

“Worst comes to worst, you’ll be able to get away without them suspecting you.” She said.

“Anything else you can tell?” Erik asked.

“Entrance is shut tight. Star-breakers wouldn’t be able to force them open. Not with the shields up.” Spire said.

“Whoa whoa whoa, shields? Like, the door shields?” Morr said.

“Based on my scans now that I’m here...hull shielding.” Sylan said.

“Yeah how are we supposed to crack that? I don’t have enough of a boom for precursor starships.” Erik said.

“Won’t need to, I should be able to handle interfacing with it.” Spire said, gesturing them to follow him.

“Are you sure it has to be you...maybe I could try telepathic interaction?” Lydyl proposed, raising her hand only for spire to shake his head.

“You’d get lost trying to figure out Alimbic psitech, I’ve cracked into Alimbic security systems before. Just keep an eye out for any responders.” He said, turning to lead them to the entrance he had carved out. However, it was almost immediately obvious that the entrance was a solid wall.

“Trying to be funny?” Morr asked.

“The Alimbics were masters of teleportation and subversal manipulation tech. They only used doors as back-ups or courtesies. But I can get access by making a request to enter.” Spire said.

“Just ringing the doorbell huh?” Morr said.

“He means he’s going to ping the ship’s A.Is.” Gyda corrected.

“Will it hurt?” Arne asked.

“Nah, Alimbic teleporters are perfectly safe.”

“Says the guy who takes baths in magma.” Lydyl snorted.

“Molten obsidian is great for the pores, you just can’t handle the heat.” He said jokingly as he scanned the ship to let his suit A.I begin communications. In a conversation that took place over the course of less than a nanosecond, the ship A.I determined they were allowed to enter after confirming the presence of a Diamont and engulfed them in translucent green energy to teleport them within the ship.

_Interior of the Alimbic "Themata" Type Battlecruiser, "Caesarian Lance"_

The sensation of space warping and twisting around them until they were suddenly somewhere else was far too brief to be felt, but the sudden change in temperatures was most certainly noticed by Arne.

His pallid skin, deliberately paled through genetic editing in the womb to ensure he could receive precious Vitamin D from Cylosis’ daylight, began to flush with the heightened temperature. He wasn’t comfortable and there was only so much his smart clothes could do to reduce the sweltering heat he was feeling.

The area they were in was a sterile, metallic colour intermixed with warmer earthy tones from stone objects brought inside. But the ship was unmistakably military in layout, and unlike the Vesper Defense Outpost, it was kept at a considerably balmier temperature. No widespread coolant leaks for one thing. This was _impeccably_ maintained.

It was a long hallway with a number of platforms and a substantial number of screens displaying information none of them could comprehend or read. But a telepathic probe pulsed through the halls and portals that the machinery within made use of began to flare to life once more. There were intruders that needed responses.

The strange mechanoids of the dormant ship soon came to life in response to the presence of intruders, all bearing the Alimbic’s trademark of a single cyclopean optic and Lydyl shuddered somewhat as she felt a telepathic signal echo through the ship.

“Stay behind me.” Gyda said, pulling her son closer to her, looking to Spire and nodding as she huddled with the group. The procession of machines soon formed a circle around the small band, no moves were yet made by the machines to prepare weapons, but they hovered, stood, or rolled rather unpleasantly close.

“We would like to indicate that we come in Peace! Please try not to crowd us!” Sylan protested.

“Oh, Crosenii I don’t want to die in this zoomerhole.” Morr begged of his death goddess.

But the machines suddenly looked upwards and around, stepping away as impossibly lanky and tall figures materialised via the translucent glow of a teleporter and the whooshing sound of air pushed out of the way. Insectile in form with the contours of their armour ending in many sharpened points, their pincered hands split into two fingers each, tapping their pseudo-fingers together as they straightened themselves to a height over twice that of a human.

They lacked necks like the Krikens, with their somewhat teardrop-shaped heads with pointed crests floating above their torso with no known connections. Singular cyclopean glowing eyes studied the group and the air hummed with potent energies. Though they had the proportions of stick bugs, their great height and the nakedly obvious energies they commanded were enough to garner respect all the same.

The impossible sight of Alimbics, real, living alimbics, was now staring them down and studying them. It was enough to make Arne drop onto his knees while the adults save for Spire and Gyda quaked slightly in nervous anticipation. Nobody had seen a living Alimbic since the days of the Roman Empire. Not a single human before them had ever laid eyes on one to their knowledge, and here was a whole ship's worth of them.

There were four, a tetrarchy and a triumvirate with the four arranged in a line and the three in a triangle apart from one another, making it clear that they were from separate groups.

The tetrachs were red, green, blue, and yellow; while the Triumvirate counted an orange and an august purple one amongst them flanking those who clad themselves in steely grey.

“-Do you speak for these beings, Diamont?-” The Grey one did not speak so much as let their words be remembered in the minds of the group. Imperious, stern, like a general ordering their troops.

“Can’t they speak for themselves?” Spire rumbled.

“-You are one of the Enlightened, these are your charges are they not?-” The Yellow one said.

“-Though I must question why you are alone here? You refuse our mental probes access.-” The orange one said, tilting their heads farther downwards towards them.

“Because there aren’t any. I’m the last as far as I know.” He said.

“-...How did they disappear? Do the Cathedrals of Mondreus still stand? Who are you?-” The Green one asked, their telepathic voice filled with...concern.

“I don’t know, I woke up to find everyone else gone. All the buildings emptied, all the vehicles vanished.” Spire sighed, his glow dimming slightly with sadness.

“He’s Spire.” Gyda cut in, hoping to satisfy their request for information and silently praying that satisfying their curiosity would outweigh their offence to her speaking out of turn.

“-A nickname?-” The Red one asked, this one more curious than annoyed.

“Yeah, and you don’t need to know more than that.”

“-And what of your companions whom you allow to speak for you?-” The grey one asked. The responses were curt and virtually instantaneous, though the Alimbic seemed largely disinterested in the words of what they clearly seemed to regard as not worthy of breathing the same air as them. But there was yet one who had not introduced themselves.”

The blue one looked down at Arne and offered their hand to him, having picked up on the custom from a cursory telepathic scan. “-I am Elmorni, what is your name little one?-” She said.

“Arne...Skjǫldr, I’m three but mommy says I’m smart for my age.” He said, smiling bashfully at her, not quite sure of the proper way to address her.

“-These are my companions, Ygrak, Urim, Mortirk, Deglos, Osith, and Zurvduat.-” She said, gesturing to the Red, Green, Yellow, Purple, Orange, and Grey Alimbic in succession as he nodded, the conversations his parents were having fading into the background.

“-You’re a bright one aren’t you? I can see such rich colours of thought coming from you.-” She said.

“Daddy says I’m very...precocious.” He said, trying to sound out the word to not come off as a fool.

“-I see no lie in that.-” She said with a small, warm mental laugh that almost bounced around in his head, like a memory that couldn’t quite be pinned down and detailed.

“Can I ask you a question?” He asked, softly in an almost whisper-like voice, as if he wanted it to be a secret.

“-Of course.-” She said, almost kneeling so that she could be less towering in comparison to him despite her tremendous lanky height.

“Are you a bug?” He asked, resting his chin atop his stuffed animal and looking intently at her.

“-I don’t have the mouthparts of one. But I can see the resemblance. Why do you ask?-” He said.

“Because you only have five legs.” He said plainly as if the reason was supposed to be the most obvious thing in the world.

“-Ah, that is because we are not _your_ bugs.-” She said, giving him the impression of a motherly figure smiling as he nodded and accepted the response.

“-Now, let me ask you a question, Arne. What do you know of us?-” She asked.

“You’re not supposed to be here...you’re supposed to be gone.” He said, nodding and nibbling a bit at his thumb after pulling off a glove.

“-I gathered that. How long ago was that supposed to be?-” She asked.

“Mrmm...fifty thousand years...earth years!” He said nodding.

“-And is that the planet where you are from?-” She asked, getting a negative headshake.

“Nuh-uh, mom says it's not safe to go there because people will hurt me.” He said, holding a bit tighter to his stuffed dinosaur.

“-What people?-” She asked, her mental voice sweet and motherly.

“The Federation, Space Pirates, Krikens, or any number of other hostiles will be here soon if word leaks about our discovery here.” Gyda said, the words all regaining Arne’s attention. Like a bogeyman or a monster under the bed more than anything else to him. He turned his red eyes to his mother as she tried to speak to Zurvduat, tilting his head slightly before looking back at her.

“Those people.” He said.

“-Why do you think those people want to hurt you?-” Elmorni asked.

“I don’t know...maybe it’s because nobody loves them?” Arne said, biting a bit at his thumb as a snort came from several of the people in the room.

“-And why should I care? If what you say is true and the Tetrarchy is gone then I have far greater concerns than the squabblings of primates, lizards, and fish over petty political grievances.-” They said almost scornfully, the disdain evident in their telepathic voice and getting a scowl from Gyda.

“Hey, who do you think you are calling us primates?” Erik said, pointing accusingly at Zurvduat, the tripedal alien’s legs twitching as they stared at the digit the way one would glare at a strange dog that just barked at them.

“-Your technology is primitive even with access to what came before you. Your psychic and mystical evolution is even more unformed. You are not in any position to make demands of me as an equal.-” Zurvduat said.

“-Are you not being too harsh to our hosts?-” Ygrak said, turning towards her superior who did not so much as turn their head towards them in acknowledgement.

“-That they happened upon the planet we crashed on does not make them our hosts.-” He said, straightening himself in the process.

“You know, I’m starting to wish you guys were still extinct.” Spire rumbled.

“-Is that a threat?-” Deglos said, snapping their head towards him as the mechanoids around spire unfurled their weapons, Spire shifted his feet and snarled, pushing Arne behind him and interposing himself between the boy and the Alimbics.

“No, just a complaint.”

“-Watch your tongue Spire.-” Osith said coldly, though Spire only narrowed his gaze in response.

“This was a waste of time, come on, let’s leave.” Gyda said.

“Colonel, are you sure?” Lydyl said.

“I’m with Skjǫldr, these jackasses aren’t going to be of any help.” Morr said, stopping just short of spitting in his helmet.

“Mom what’s a jack-” Arne asked before a somewhat alarmed Erik snapped around to him and placed a shushing finger on his lips.

“Not a word you should say at your age.” He said, scooping up Arne and swaddling his son in his arms before looking at Gyda and nodding.

“Are you certain they’ll let us out?” Sylan asked.

“-Of course you are free to leave. You have committed no violence against us. But be assured, you are to remain silent about what you found here. We will be watching.-” Zurvduat said, disdainfully even as some of the other Alimbics looked at him as if he had grown a second head.

“...Alright.” Gyda said coldly as she stormed out, the portals snapping to life and warping them back outside.

_Himminsdag Mountains, Cylosis, Cyrus’ Expanse, Pinwheel Galaxy._

“I’d call those some fruitful negotiations.” Morr said before Gyda glowered at him with a glare that even through their helmets, Morr could tell was a sign for him to shut up.

“Maybe we should try later?” Lydyl asked.

“No, we need to get going and abandon this planet and get fleet mobile again. If they’re not willing to help defend it, I don’t want to be anywhere near here when word gets out about what we found. I’ll notify EVA planetary command and the ODOCR civilian government about our findings. Hopefully, General Thraksim will see reason and give the order to Evac. And if not he can eat me out with vinegar..” She said, clearly frustrated.

“Eat you o-” Arne said before Gyda realised what she said and flushed a bit beneath her helmet.

“When you’re older honey.” She said, somewhat flustered.

“The Republics aren’t going to be happy about just letting the Alimbics go.” Spire said.

“We couldn’t stop them if we wanted to.” Erik said.

“And I’m guessing your paramilitary outfit isn’t prepared to handle full military incursions here?” He asked.

“We don’t have the kind of force here to stop a full-scale invasion by the kind of troop movements that would be sent We’ve fought off incursions before, but people would literally destroy this entire starsystem to get that ship. We wouldn’t last a day against people desperate enough to go all out to take it. We need to get out of here.” She said sternly.

“Bottom line is, the Ensryn Volunteer Army is a guerilla force; we’re supposed to leave the hardcore stuff to the RRA.” She continued.

“Just gonna let them walk?” Lydyl asked.

“Didn’t say anything about that. We can still track them. I left something on their ship. We should hopefully be able to give that to the EVA supreme council.” Erik said.

“Clever, aren’t you?” Gyda smiled.

“I learned from the best.” He smirked back as she stepped towards him with a sway in her hips and looked at Arne and then gestured to Sylan to pick him up. Realising what was happening, the others picked up Arne and began to move out.

“Don’t fret about us too much we’ll catch up. Just need to handle a few...personal things with my husband.” Gyda said as she laid her hands on his chest and pushed him to a sufficiently cosy-looking cavern.

* * *

**Sylux's Logbook Entries**

Planets: Pinwheel Galaxy: Cyrus' Expanse: Human Habitable: Ensryn Volunteer Army Occupied: Visited: Cylosis (Part 1)

Cylosis is a cold world that orbits at a considerable distance from its parent star, Cynar. Roughly Earth mass, the planet was on the outer rim of the old Tetrarch Order of the Alimbics before that civilization's disappearance and remained largely unnoticed by intelligent life until recently. The world was occupied by the Ensryn Volunteer Army paramilitary force to establish a logistical base to harry foreign intrusions into the local space such as the Piratical Confederacy of Dismor, the Kriken Empire, the Galactic Federation and other unwelcome imperial intrusions. The planet is notable for its high geological activity due to more than thirty times the expected quantities of radioactive elements such as Uranium comprising the planet; resulting in a large number of mountain ranges and high quantities of heavy metals pushed to the surface by mantle churn. It is also known for an unusually strong magnetic field and thick ozone layer that filters out virtually all harmful solar radiation, resulting in very little melanin equivalent in most native life forms. Oxygen content and atmosphere density is higher than Earth's while gravity is slightly stronger, but Argon comprises a much larger portion of Cylosis' atmosphere. One of its more distinct features is the natural nuclear reactor lakes in some regions and the rare phenomenon of coexistence between nuclear and chemical-based biologies.

_Arne's notes:_

A lot of people just think of conventional mountains when they think of Cylosis, but what I always remember of home were the volcanoes. Especially the Pyrostorms they often made, I liked to just sit and watch the bolts of electricity dance through the black clouds of ash. It always felt kind of...relaxing? This might sound weird, insane even to most but they were always beautiful to me, not dangerous. Every time I go back I like to just sit and watch one of the eruptions.

Organizations: Paramilitary: Revolutionary: Omdyn Democratic Omnipragmatist Council Republics Aligned: Ensryn Volunteer Army 

The Ensryn Volunteer Army was formed in the Ensryn Nebula to fight against expansionist efforts by powers considered hostile to the general welfare of the region, though in recent years it has expanded its reach. While locally lead, it enjoys substantial support from the ODOCR and its Intergalactica, and also from sympathizers elsewhere. Primarily organised as a defence militia, a volunteer force able and ready to partake in other conflicts as needed, and an insurgency force, the EVA's most recent activities have involved attempting to aid in the organization of revolts in foreign colonies. The EVA does not discriminate by species, gender, or culture and recruits freely from all promising volunteers.

_Arnes notes:_

There are criticisms of them to be made, but I'm not going to hear any from the Federation, the Pirates or whatever batch of bootlicks decries them because they got mauled for poking a sleeping Saber-Tyrant. The Stars were not made for chains.

Organizations: State: Federal: Omnipragmatist: Intergalactica Affiliated: Omdyn Democratic Omnipragmatist Council Republics

The ODOCR originated from the Antennae Galaxy during Cosmic Year 2005 after the Omdyn accords formally unified a number of Omnipragmatist governments, movements, organizations, and societies into a single body. Located relatively far from the hubs of Chozo activity, the ODOCR has had somewhat strained relations with the Galactic Federation, the United Engenoid Sovereign Nations, the Hramilndan Domain, and the Vhozon dominated Order of Eternal Justice in recent years due to bitter trade disputes but has remained somewhat cordial in the face of the greater threat posed by the likes of the Space Pirates, Ivasti Star Serenity, the Glathik War-Clans, the Greater Vlakyl Realm, and the Kriken Empire. It considers the Free Omnipragmatic Federative Republic of Ugervolt, the Union of Othimarin Omnipragmatist Republics, the Popular Republic of Kzarni, and the Omnipragmatist Republic of Avarist as its closest allies. The Omdyns are organized as a federal democratic body as directly as possible, with all delegates subject to recall by both their constituents and federal subordinates and the populace being able to enact decisions through petition. Productive acitivity is heavily automated and synthetics make up the supermajority of the population.

_Arne's notes:_

I've never really gotten why everyone makes such a big deal about the synths. An organic brain is just a naturally evolved molecular computer and the Federation has its Aurora units managing half of everything now. It does feel more isolating to be the only human face in some places though.

Organizations: Clan: ODOCR Residing: Uskarling: Grendakal

The Grendakal clan is a prominent clan within Uskarling society, living a mostly fleet based existence like most of the other Uskarling clans. Founded by Grandak, a Ivkarian warrior who agreed to join the ODOCR towards the end of their life, the Grendakal clan prides itself in strong solidarity with itself, a powerful sense of justice, and an eagerness to fight for righteous causes. Grendakal accepts any who take and pass the Harrowing, its chief rite of passage which tests the mind, body, and spirit

_Arne's notes:_

The Clan's been good to me despite everything, and I like to think I'm good to them.

Combatants: EVA: Organic: Infantry: EVA Militant

Equipped with the LEOIC-337 PPR (Particle Projector Rifle) and JFSG-361 family of modular battle armours, the EVA militant is a solid and effective combatant. They make up for their somewhat weaker shielding and armour with higher mobility systems and low-observability functions that make their suits harder to detect and lock onto. For close quarters, most are fitted with energy bayonets, one for the gun and one for use as a knife or as a back up. Grenades are standard issue and are typically of submunition burst varieties for anti-personnel work, or are shaped blast explosives for use in demolition or against hard targets. Jump jets are standard on EVA militants like virtually all modern combatants.

_Arne's notes:_

Whatever you can say of them, you couldn't ever fault their spirit.

Individuals: Freelancers: Active: Diamond Rank: Silicoids: Unaffiliated: Spire

Spire is thought to be the sole remaining Diamont, an ancient species of silicon-based lifeforms whose bodies are formed of organic rock that considered themselves peers of the Chozo and Alimbics. Spire travels the cosmos as a freelancer searching for information on the location, or fate, of the rest of his people. Considered one of the best, Spire is highly regarded for their strong moral compass, sense of empathy, efficient working methods, and mastery of archaeology, geology, and investigative abilities. While difficult to get a read on himself, Spire is extremely adept at surprisingly gently getting information out of others. His combat abilities are also regarded as having very few rivals, having been active for a full cosmic year and having only rarely had to retreat from engagements.

_Arne's notes:_

He's surprisingly soft for a big pile of rocks. And also shockingly cool for someone who regularly dips in lava.

[1] Uskarling term translating to "Friend" or "Comrade".


	3. A Walk in the Park (SA)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A few last accounts are settled on K-2L before Old Bird must part ways from Samus for a while, but something looms heavy in the ancient Chozo's mind.

_Neorai Forests, K-2L, Whirlpool Galaxy_

The two had been brought before the same old tree as before. It rose high into the air, its green leaves swishing in the wind while the same pink furred Rabil still clung onto Samus’ backpack. She looked to the Rabil and then back to old bird, looking at him with a wide-eyed smile. She wanted to believe.

“Old Bird, can you fly?” Samus asked, staring at him curiously. She looked at him with eyes full of hope and excitement. Perhaps he could resolve the conundrum that she'd been faced with.

“Not with my wings. We have not used those in a very long time.” He said gently as she huffed in disappointment.

“Aww, then we’ll never get my backpack back.” She said as Old bird looked at the tree and reached out his hand. Invisible force grabbed hold of some purple fruits, round and almost heartlike in shape. He sampled one. The taste was sweet, tart to him, like a watery date.

“Wow...can you get my backpack with that?” She said as he offered her one of the fruits. She took a curious bite herself, to her tongue she could detect a more watermelon like flavour, picking up some chemicals his tongue missed but also missing some his detected easily.

“We should think carefully about how we use force. Do they look harmful to you?” He said.

“Well..no.” She said, frowning somewhat and looking back up at him just moments after taking a second look at the Rabil.

“Then why not convince them to come down?” He said, laying a hand on her shoulder before looking back at the Rabil as they turned their head around in curiosity.

“Okay but how?” Samus asked, spinning around and pulling at the Old Chozo’s hand to pry answers from him. She gave him a pleading look, clearly eager to understand his wisdom as he had a small chuckle and tapped the underside of his beak.

“It is because they are afraid that you are angry with them.” He said, giving her a warm sensation in an equivalent of a smile delivered through telepathy rather than sight. She relaxed somewhat at the feeling, a surge of a sensation of safety slowly disseminating through her. She squeezed his hand a bit more gently now, sighing in a more relaxed way.

“How do you know that? Is it magic?” She asked, getting a small laugh from Old Bird in the process.

“No, I can do magic, but I wasn’t using it then. It was psionics. But maybe we can use this as a time to learn about making new friends.” He said, patting her on the back.

“Okay.” She said somewhat meekly, not quite getting just what he was going for at the moment as she tried to think on his intention.

“Let’s start with giving them a name first. Then we can play with them.” He said, urging her to look upon the Rabil as she considered his words.

She placed her hand on her forehead and thought intently. She closed her eyes and her mind raced through many possibilities. She considered and discarded dozens of names as she thought, grunting slightly as she tried to think of something perfect. Something that they would really like. Something cute…

“Pyonchi!” She said loudly, raising her index finger in a Eureka pose as she looked at the Old Chozo and then at the Rabil who was clearly startled by the sudden announcement. However, they did not run away, and instead looked more intently at Samus.

After a few moments of silence, she started to giggle, something shared by Old Bird as he joined in just a few moments later.

Pyonchi, newly named and curious of the reduced hostility they sensed from Samus began to climb down, the Backpack in their front paws as they approached with a series of short hops, the tuft of white fur around their neck ruffling slightly while their squirrel-like tail swayed slightly behind them.

Samus leaned down and reached out for her backpack, which the Rabil relinquished without a struggle as they stared at the fruit Samus was eating. She looked over at Old Bird and received a nod of affirmation, prompting her to loan out the fruit to the animal who quickly began to strip the fruit of its reddish flesh in a surprisingly voracious manner.

“See if you can pet them now, Samus. Be careful, don’t rush into it so that they may be comfortable in your presence.” Old bird said, gesturing towards the Rabil for Samus as she slung her backpack behind her back and reached a hand out to the Rabil. The mammal tensed briefly, but then allowed the touch to happen.

“Remember, keep your strokes gentle and soft. Don’t push too hard into them. And when you embrace them, keep in mind that Pyonchi will still need their space. Don’t constrain them.” He said, an “okay” coming from her as she slightly picked up the pace of her pets but avoided increasing the force behind them. The Rabil thumped their foot in response, leaning into the pets and getting closer to her.

“Now I think Pyonchi is fond of you.” Old Bird said, sighing gently as he sat down beneath the shade while Samus stroked the fur of Pyonchi. Pyonchi responded by pushing into her a bit more as she hugged around it, though not too tightly or completely as to stress them out by making them feel there was no escape.

“Can I take them home?” Samus asked, eyes looking up at Old Bird who simply let out a small chuckle at that as he hid his hands away into his sleeves as he crossed his arms. He was quite relaxed right now, and seemed to be satisfied with the work he had done in expanding her horizons.

“That is up to your family Samus, but I am certain they will understand your friendship once you explain it to them.” He said, closing his eyes and letting his mind drift into the ether of the morphoscape.

_Morphoscape_

The Stars were in a peace of sorts. Conflict was there, but war was generally the stuff of localised skirmishes. His brethren on Tallon IV, who had sadly gone silent in recent years, were far more gifted at the distant sight than he or most of the others who did not join their commune were. They had a clarity of vision and an accuracy in determining the likelihood of their visions that the more advanced Chozo could never match.

But he had that gift all the same. And now he would make use of it, letting his mind stretch from his body and open its spiritual eyes to a manner of seeing the synapses of cause and effect in a way no physical instruments ever could. There was a sort of relaxing effect to seeing the pathways of destiny unfurl and transform. Possible futures withered or changed, some so tenuous that simply knowing their existence caused the threads to fade into impossibility.

All seemed to be well to his eyes in the distant sight.

Then he deigned to look at threads closer to home. It had been difficult to examine the destiny of the Chozo in recent years. Something had been clouding those fates from them recently, a shroud over the conduits of possibility that he was unable to pierce despite his experience.

But there were unusual sights, something that was connecting that should not be present. A thread long though severed had been quietly reasserting itself. Something that had been dead for more than five hundred human generations was alive again. The Alimbics? Impossible. The doom that fell upon them was so swift and terrible.

And yet...it is never an easy task to fully eradicate a species capable of faster than light travel. It is so easy to miss some who may slip through the would be annihilator’s fingers. But where had they been for so long?

He looked deeper, and saw another thread coiled around this cable of many destinies. The colour of humanity glowed in the synaptic pathways. One that tied towards the Chozo once again, albeit only ephemerally, but the pathways of destiny began to coil incredibly tightly around something else. Another set of destinies, another batch of possibilities. But one among them, another human, this one woven tightly around the Chozo.

He tried to examine these pathways deeper and saw violent flashes of pain and strife. Trauma, agony, conflict, the shroud weaving ever more tightly so as to block his sight from seeing more than glimpses. Something terrible; the serpent of malignant doom constricting around all fates and hiding them away from the gift of prophecy.

It was too much and he drew back from the visions. What was that? What did he see that made him tremble? What doom could lay in the fates of humans? He pondered this for some time, but he was certain that the quiet era was coming to an end. Fire and shroud were descending upon more and more of the possible pathways of fate.

Not one threat, but an army of them. A menagerie of menace that would require the manner of force to repel that no longer truly existed. Already the drumbeat of conflict was sounding throughout the synaptic corridors of possible outcomes. Threads of destiny struggled and entwined as they warred for supremacy.

This had been known to the Chozo for some time, but the scope of it all was still so very terrible to behold. Such senseless violence and destruction. Such monstrous sights that haunted his visions and made him almost despair. But he held onto hope, and he steeled himself with a mantra, reminding himself that this too shall pass.

Those painful threads, the destinies of those two humans and others whose fates were entangled with theirs. They brought light. Gleaming radiance in darkness, and calm in the firestorm of destruction. They were important. But he needed to know why. Why did they matter? And why was all of this starting to happen now?

He'd need to ponder on this later. The others could offer him fresh eyes on this wisdom.

_K-2L, Gaela Landing Plaza_

“So are we agreed then? We will return to you with what we seek to exchange for your Afloraltite and ensure that you are more than able to make up for the lost product.” Grey Voice said curtly.

“Want to shake on it?” Rodney said, extending his hand towards the Chozo who regarded the hand briefly before reciprocating the gesture. His grip was surprisingly gentle for someone clad in armour even given the claws built into it, and it was immediately apparent that Grey Voice had no patience for childish games of grip strength as he pulled his hand way shortly.

“I would very much like to see you again in the future. You were respectful and courteous, and I would like to see you all rewarded for your hospitality.” August Wings said, offering a respectful bow to the miners of K-2L as they congratulated themselves on securing something that might turn around the fate of the colony for years to come.

“Now, we will depart shortly, there are arrangements to be made on Zebes as I am sure you all understand. Expect our return shortly and please feel free to bring more of your hospitality with you for the occasion.” Somek-Ka said politely, keeping his hands close to himself.

“Are you all set to leave now?” Virginia said, offering a faint smile to the gathered Chozo who looked at each other and then back at her.

“We must await the return of Re-Sekh. Fortunately, that wait will end very shortly.” August said, turning her head to see the emergence of Old Bird with Samus in tow behind him. His pace was unhurried but deliberate, and his presence was unmistakable.

“Old Bird, do you have to go?” Samus said, holding Pyonchi close to her while following the now re-helmeted Chozo Elder who had taken the effort to walk across the ground when he just as easily could have hovered over it. She kept pace with him as he walked, tugging somewhat at his cloak.

“My apologies Samus, but there are things I must take care of sooner than later. We will be seeing each other soon though. Don’t worry.” He said, patting her on the head gently as he prepared to step back onto the plaza.

“How long is soon?” She asked.

“Hopefully, we will be back in less than a day. You have my word.” He said.

“And when you come back...will you play with Pyonchi with me?” Samus asked, holding the Rabil up to the ancient who smiled and stroked its head with a few gentle pats before looking back to her.

“I promise.” He said, offering her a small medallion, one bearing the stylized S like symbol associated with his lineage. A Chozo symbol of courage and honour. He slowly clasped her hands over it and let her hold it tight after fitting it around her neck.

“What’s this for?” She asked, looking up at him with curiosity as he stood himself back up, pushing himself upwards with his cane and gazing down upon her.

“So that we may always be able to find each other. If you ever wish to call on me, close your hands over the medallion and think of me. And I will be there as fast as I can. And who knows? Perhaps one day I will have need to call upon you?” He said gently, brushing some hair away from her face.

“Okay...can I use it now?” She said, getting a small laugh from Old Bird.

“Soon Samus, soon.” He said as he walked back towards Grey Voice and August Wings.

“This will be goodbye for now. But not for long.” He said as he let the ship teleport them back in, the loud noise of air rushing to fill in the sudden vacuum giving Samus and Pyonchi a bit of a startle as they jumped in surprise.

Virginia caught her before she could fall though, and helped her stand upright once again. Her eyes were then almost immediately drawn to the Rabil in her arms, which made a high rumbling sound as they adjusted themselves in her grasp.

“Where did you get that?” She asked. She knew that most children would eventually bring in a wild animal to the house sooner or later but she never expected this day would come so soon.

“Their name is Pyonchi and they’re my new friend!” She said, beaming at her parents.

_Aboard the Chozo ship “Exodia.”_

“Will it be enough?” Grey Voice asked.

“Plenty, we should be able to manufacture the Zebetite using this as a seed.” August Wings said, the machines examining the listed inventory of supplies harvested from the colony.

“With any luck, Mother Brain will be able to complete the Zebetite network on Zebes and we’ll be able to complete our great work.” August continued.

“Hers or ours?” Old Bird said rather pointedly, his expression tightening somewhat beneath his helmet.

“You do not fully trust Mother brain?” Grey Voice asked, his neck craning over towards Old bird and tilting his head somewhat.

“I sometimes feel she is too focused on the task of building order that she forgets that the truest order is born of harmony, something that can only arise from freedom and solidarity comingled together into one. To try to craft order from one ruler’s vision will inevitably lead to chaos and friction. Only the masses can create structure that lasts.” Old Bird explained.

“She does what we have designed her to do. We have given up the Imperial Peace, but there must still be a way to provide structure to our efforts, look what happened to the communes of Tallon IV.” Grey voice said, conjuring an image of the slowly dying world being devoured by the contents of the crater that marred it, slowly leaking out of the cage its former inhabitants sealed it within.

“They forsook the path of science to embrace the trees. We have much greater means with which to take care of ourselves. Re-Sekh is right to worry about how often we trust her judgement on all matters.” Isa-Hesh said.

“You trust in our technology to protect ourselves but not in its ability to form and cast judgements?” Somek-Ka said, his thought waves indicating curiosity had taken hold in his thoughts over the previous scepticism. Why did they think that way?

“My issue is not with her nature as a synthetic consciousness. My fear is that we have given her a dangerous set of priorities that may lead her to one day devalue happiness and freedom from repression and want for the sake of efficiency and a cold, rationalized order. And if she does, she will inevitably gain none and lose them all.” Old Bird said, a heavy sigh coming from his helmet as their ship simply carved a tunnel in space and shot through in a heartbeat. Far faster than hyper-drive could ever manage as the ship slingshotted from one galaxy to the next.

“And yet we must still complete our great work. The seals have started to wane and the cosmos requires the totality of our wisdom if it is to advance to the heights we occupied before any of the present generation could walk the stars.” Grey Voice said as the Chozo ship began its descent, sliding through the manifold barrier that repelled the unwanted and unwelcome.

“I just hope that we are not widening the cracks in the great dam of peace.” Old Bird said as the ship started its final approach to the surface of the yellow and brown world. The warm surface of Crateria awaited them which lay before the city and templescape of Chozodia. Great pyramids, mighty walls and temples, adobes, libraries, and universities all awaited them in that hallowed place of knowledge and wisdom.

But where they were needed was someplace deeper and more forbidden. A place that they named for an old style of Fortress in ancient wars long past.

A place called Tourian.

_Tourian, Zebes, FS-176, Zokunai Nebula, Whirlpool Galaxy_

The great machine inside opened a single eye bigger than an entire person curled into a foetal position. Metallic spikes divided her reddish hemispheres and a stem of machinery at the bottom hummed gently with energy flowing into her from across a network of Zebetite cells. Seated at the centre of a well-defended room bristling with defensive weapons in case of an unexpected attack on her, she pulsated briefly as she absorbed all information laid out before her. Cerebral electricity crackled across her every ridge and wrinkle and the thoughts of an alien mind of scarcely imaginable genius turned to analysing the sight before her.

"Mother Brain, what do you make of this planet?" The ancient Amun-Set asked, Platinum Crest's white coloured helmet dipping low as he presented to her an image of K-2L, generated by a simple spell he weaved from the power flowing through his old bones.

"-The Afloraltite will be more than sufficient for conversion into Zebetite. Then I will be able to accelerate my part in the great project.-"

Ge-Shut, the bitter and proud Iron Heart raised his hand to speak. Grey was his chest plate, rust was his helm. "I believe honoured Amun-Set wishes to ask what you think of the planet, not of its resources." A small whistling laugh came from him after that.

"I believe that went without saying." Amun-Set said.

Such inefficiency, she thought to herself. She had already thought of that possibility, but why bother expending the joules to put her mind to such worthless tasks and qualitization of some miserable rock? One may as well ask her to waste her time with running holo-games. Her gaze slowly adjusted from Ge-Shut to Amun-Set and then narrowed. Fine, she thought, she would indulge the old sorcerer in his nonsense. However much she disdained such...worthless endeavours as characterizing a few million miners.

"-A doomed people who rely on the promise of timely naval intervention to guise to prevent themselves from rioting when they realise that the Federation is stretched too thin and has too many rivals and enemies to protect it. They are inevitably and invariably doomed, sooner or later raiders or invaders will arrive and that will be the end of the colony. Please, do not waste my time with conclusions that are obvious. If the beings who reside on that planet cannot realise they have been sent there to die, then they deserve it.-" Her words were colder than the ices of neighbouring Tallon IV's Phendrana region, her prognosis grimmer than the fate of planet Bilium. Outrage flashed within many of the Chozo.

"You cannot say such monstrous things!" Violet Rose; Hatho-Sekhma; was shaking with visible anger. Mother Brain regarded her through a composite of sensors placed throughout Tourian. Hath was of Somek's generation, and her righteous fury was aimed squarely for the great intelligence that lay before her. Her violet and rose coloured armour that she had styled after her Galaxan name

"Planets die all the time, such is the nature of the evil days in which we live." Star Strider said, the old black and white armoured Chozo shifting her position slightly as she floated cross-legged in the air near Mother Brain. This was someone Mother Brain could respect at least, she could recognise the aberrancy that surrounded them and her.

"What manner of foe would dare to attack a world they know is in our eye? Surely they would have to be void of mind and possessed of arkimak spines to even consider such a thing!" Horath-Baast spoke up. The young War Hawk was barely an adult and she had the audacity to think that just because the Chozo wished for a voice of the Youth to be on their councils that she could speak out of turn to her of all things? This one would grate on her nerves just as every other speaker of the Youth before her did. She couldn't wait for her term to end.

"-Have you so swiftly forgotten your vows of pacifism? What could you actually do to protect this or any other world without my drone forces? Forces that I will not waste on the defence of these proletarian wastrels while we have such high ambitions to realise. None of you could defend the smallest space station from a foe determined to attack it. Not as you are now. You need me, and I will see to it that our plans are realised.-" She said. She would have laughed if she had not thought such joviality to be beneath her. Yes, she had the keys to the Kingdom and only through her genius could the destiny of the Chozo be realised.

"Then perhaps we should bring in fresh blood." Horath-Baast muttered to herself under her breath. Please, Mother Brain thought to herself. She was the heir apparent to the Chozo Legacy. Their crown jewel and finest creation. She would be their eternal gift to the stars. Nobody could change that.

* * *

** Samus' Logbook Entries **

Psionics: Concepts: Extrasensory: Morphoscape 

The Morphoscape is a scientific term used to describe the realm that certain psions and practitioners of other esoteric abilities are able to access with what the Chozo referred to as the "Distant Sight". This ability allows for perceptions of possible futures as well as their likelihood, which are perceived as a series of visions connected by threads spreading through the synaptic webs of the Morphoscape. The farther removed in space, time, and relation to the event or pathway of events that one is from a future the hazier it becomes and some possibilities are eliminated through simply becoming aware of them. However, the late segments of Cosmic year 2095 are infamous for the "shroud" that serves to obscure the Distant Sight, leading to significant anxieties and speculation as to the cause and reason of the Shroud. 

_Samus' notes:_

My own warning sense is probably the only well developed psionic gift I have right now. But I've always been interested in developing the Distant Sight further. Call it curiosity in destiny, or simply wanting to practice a gift from my guardians.

Esoterical Concepts; Magic

Magic is considered a stranger and more difficult to verify experimentally art than psionics. Magecraft is something that is somewhat rare amongst many present-day civilisations, particularly those who are of a less spiritually inclined bent, though it is at the very least repeatable even if its rules function more on abstract story logic than conventional physics. However, most of the progenitor civilizations were known to practice some form of magic which were verifiable without a doubt and were widely utilised in virtually every form of precursor artifice to blend together the best of all worlds. Efforts to try and match precursor skill at these matters remains ongoing and many believe that the present era is thousands of years at best from achieving a comparable understanding of magic to the progenitor cultures.

_Samus' notes:_

One of my greatest regrets in life is never getting the time I wanted to practice the sorcery of the Chozo. I suppose I'm not really going to have a chance to learn properly now. But I always loved the little shows Old Bird would put on for me.

Languages: Constructed: Galaxan

Constructed by the Chozo to serve as a common means of communication across the universe, Galaxan is something of a combination of the Chozo language of Kaset, the human language of English, the Alfae language of Astraemdi, the Omyrn language of Omanesch, the Vhozon tongue of Kuut, the Zekunso language of Uskarling and a number of other influences. While not quite the universal language, at least an understanding of Galactica is usually considered necessary for travel beyond one's homeworld. Designed to be spoken by the widest possible range of vocal structures while also being simple to learn, Galaxan is available to learn for free at any licensed memory download provider.

_Samus' notes:_

The Space Pirates make it a point of pride to never speak Galaxan amongst themselves. Their defiance against its universalist intentions. But the standard language amongst them; Dismak; is a strong contender for the ugliest language in the entire universe.

Substances: Energy Production: Zero Point Energy Catalysts: Zebetite

A material derived from the specific quantum structures of Afloraltite, Zebetite serves as one of the primary methods of Chozo power generation. In contrast to Afloraltite, Zebetite is far more stable and is capable of regenerating itself endlessly, even from apparent total destruction. It is so stable in fact, that it can be utilised as protection as well as power production, and the speed at which disrupted Zebetite can regrow itself is infamous for its astonishing nature. The biomechanical substance is primarily generated either synthetically or through refining Afloraltite into more of it. When interacting with psychic and mystic energies in tandem; it is also able to mimic the effects of Aeion energy in admittedly reduced form. Despite the modern name, Zebetite and its production was shared with most of the other precursor civilisations for similar purposes and was in use long before the foundation of the Zebes colony.

_Samus' notes:_

I've asked why it looks like brain tissue. From what I've been able to gather, it's because the cerebral structure is especially conductive to the sorts of energies that the Chozo like to use in tandem with Zebetite and helps with processing that power.


	4. Roll Out (AS)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arne's family make ready to leave Cylosis, but Elmorni has further questions.

_Danshof Starport, Stygna, Cylosis, Cynar System, Cyrus' Expanse, Pinwheel Galaxy_

  
The fields were busy as soldiers geared up for the evacuation. Motion abounded in all directions with everyone busily gathering their things as they sought to make sure nothing could be left behind. Transport shuttle craft were arranged across the port area as heavy equipment was being packed and loaded in with the exception of the planetary defense systems that were always to be the last things shipped out in case of danger.  
  
Gyda adjusted the belt around her armour’s waist as she fitted a flask back onto it. She took a wistful sigh as she looked forlornly over the rugged mountainscapes in the distance and the cold forests closer to home. The olive, black, red, and golden facilities set up just a scant few years ago were already disappearing into the packing containers. And the EVANS War-Lander _Coyote_ was humming with power as it awaited its loads.  
  
“Okay, Ikoye, how are we looking on prepping that ship for launch?” Gyda asked a dark skinned man who turned away from the Synth soldier he was speaking to.  
  
“It’ll be ready soon urglik Gyda. We just need to load up some of the artifacts.” He said, smiling.  
  
“If we had more soldiers here maybe we could hold..” Gyda said, pinching her brow briefly before looking back at him as Ikoye scratched at his beard.  
  
“Save wondering about “what if” for alternate history writers Gyda. Concern yourself with what we have and what we can do.” He said, making a small open handed gesture to her that she reciprocated.  
  
“We both already know that you’re right. It’s just that we haven’t been here for even five earth years and we already have to leave. I was just getting used to hiking the Dravine Fjords too.” She said with a wistful sigh.  
  
“We wouldn’t be in the Ensryn Volunteer Army if we were the type of people who got too attached to where we drift.” He said reassuringly.  
  
“Commander, sorry to interrupt.” One of the civilian personnel said, the serpentine alien slithering towards them and rearing up on her coils, her python like head flicking out her tongue while her hands held a tablet.  
  
“Something wrong Thelis?” Gyda asked, quirking a brow.  
  
“Are we really just packing up and leaving? Have the command congresses already decided that?” She asked, licking her eyes to keep them free of debris as her green scales shimmered a bit in the light.  
  
“Yes, the order to evacuate also came from ODCOR; RGA Congress command I’m afraid. We’ve already put the timetable to vote.” Gyda sighed.  
  
“Why would the Republics just ask us to just abandon this place? Especially after a find like this.” Thelis asked.  
  
“Because Omdyn isn’t ready for war with the Federation. And given our unofficial paramilitary status, they’re not ready to bleed to keep us here.” She said, sighing as she tapped her bracers to bring up some display screens.  
  
“Aye, we are here to nip at the heels of the beast. Not bite at its throat.” Ikoye said.  
  
“I...I suppose. Do you think we’ll be back? We’ve already got people born here...like him” Thelis asked, gesturing to someone to the right.  
  
“Like wh-...oh, there you are Arne.” Gyda said, quirking a brow before turning and noticing Arne wandering around, poking at some of the terminals with his relatively slender fingers.  
  
“Your son is wandering again.” He said, Sylan already in hot pursuit of the boy.  
  
“Even if I were the kind of person who believes in tethering children with snare beams I’d never be able to keep him inside. Besides, he needs to go out, it’s healthy.” She said, sighing and smiling while Sylan picked him up.  
  
“He’s been bugging me about my inventory all day.” Thelis hissed in mild annoyance.  
  
“He’s three, Thelis. He asks questions.” Gyda said, getting a grumble from the ophidian as they shook their head.  
  
“Have you explained to him that we need to leave?” He asked.  
  
“Yes. He’s...accepting at least. Shame too, I was hoping we could settle down here. It’s why I was glad they let civilians in.” She said, frowning.  
  
“It is a nice place isn’t it?” He said.  
  
“I really wanted to have him take his clan rites here. I feel guilty about taking him off world so soon.” She said, frowning before shaking her head.  
  
“Home is where you make it. He’ll be fine. And the Grendakal clan can have its rites anywhere if I’m not mistaken.” He reassured her as Arne whistled out for a pair of Ravens that flew to him, black wings beating before they perched atop the nearest terminal, cawing at him and receiving treats of bread in return.  
  
“Hugin, don’t be greedy. Leave some for Munin.” He said as he split one piece in two for them both to share. The two were Corvids alright, but these domesticated Ravens had been changed by the nearly forty eight thousand year long span humanity had been amongst the stars, friendlier, smarter, and more affectionate than the wild crows of the ancient past and more than a bit larger, as big as Golden Eagles in fact. One might even mistake them for raptors if they weren’t too familiar with birds, and the added tuft of down around their necks gave them the appearance of having collars.  
  
“Share, share.” Munin cawed, mimicking the speech it was taught before. And with a vote of two to three, Hugin acquiesced and pushed food towards Munin, letting the two take their fill.  
  
“Gydie.” Erik called, the diminutive catching Gyda’s attention almost immediately, her ears pricking up slightly as she turned around to look at him. He offered her a small wave and an easy smile on that soft face she fell in love with, and she immediately felt at ease.  
  
“What’s the matter Erik?” She asked.  
  
“One of the Alimbics is here to see us.” He said, lifting the sunglasses he was wearing to keep out the glare of the mountain sun and gesturing to Elmorni who offered an Alimbic salute in greetings to the gathered personnel. The soldiers briefly stiffened while the civilians muttered among themselves.  
  
“-May I speak to your son?-” She asked, Arne snapping his head towards her and waving, moving his stuffed dinosaur to a single hand and standing on his tip toes to be seen.  
  
“Hey! You’re back! Over here!” He said, getting a nod of appreciation from the Blue Alimbic while Erik and Gyda gave each other a shrug and a nod.  
  
“Go right ahead.” Gyda said.  
  
“Be safe out there alright?” Erik said, ruffling Arne’s hair before he shook off the hand.  
  
“Nooo stop, I like my hair like that.” He whined.  
  
“Please don’t make me have to convince him to brush his hair again.” Sylan plaintively beeped.  
  
“-There’s no need to wish him well, I’m not taking him anywhere. I’m simply curious.-” She said, offering a hand to Arne who shook it after some apprehension.  
  
“About what?” Erik asked.  
  
“-What you are teaching your young. What do you know of honour, Arne?-” She asked.  
  
“Uhm...mommy says there’s good kinds and bad kinds.” He said, biting his lower lip and nodding.  
  
“-What is bad honor?-” The alimbic said, curling up her legs to get a bit closer to him.  
  
“When you get people hurt because uh...you feel like they made you look dumb. Or uh, if you kill yourself because you em...bar...assed your family.” He said, nodding to himself.  
  
“-And good honor?-”  
  
“When you tell the truth to your friends and uh...protect them. Because it’s bad to let bullies be bullies.” He said, hugging his dinosaur a little closer to him.  
  
“-Do you have many friends to protect?-” She asked, her face now far closer to his than before, her mental voice motherly and curious.  
  
“Uh...a few...why?” He scratched a bit at his cheek, not quite sure what to make of her question.  
  
“-Well, you see, people who are strong should help those who aren’t so they can be strong too.-” She said, tilting her head at him.  
  
“Uh-huh. Mom also says that it’s important to share, and uh...that everyone should have nice things, instead of um, taking stuff you didn’t help make because you say you own it. Dad says that too.-” Arne said, sucking slightly at his thumb.  
  
“-Your parents are wise then. How often do you help others like that?-” She asked.  
  
“Uh...well, I help my friends when they ask, or when they look sad.”  
  
“-Would you like to meet a new one?-” She asked, getting an enthusiastic nod from him.  
  
“Is that wise?” Sylan asked, turning her optics towards her organic companions.  
  
“...What are you trying to offer?” Gyda asked.  
  
“-Oh, just a little something.-” She said as she conjured forth a pair of objects between her hands, teleporters pulling out creatures that resembled the mighty petal jawed Ithraks who roamed the wild places of the old Alimbic cluster. They were however, clearly mechanical. Albeit the smooth, pseudo-organic manner of machinery the Alimbics were fond of building.  
  
Blue in colour with difficult to perceive eyes and petal like mouths full of teeth, they hovered their heads near Arne who made a confused face as his space was invaded. He tried to tilt his head, to get an understanding of where to look at them. It took him about three seconds to realize that their four optics were arranged in a way that if he drew a line connecting each eye to the one on the opposite side of the head; he’d form a perfect X.  
  
They were large for sure, virtually horse sized, but they approached with curiosity rather than malice. And Arne hesitantly reached out to pet one, which chirped in response to the touch. Once he saw it was harmless, he pet with more vigour, while his pet ravens soon perched atop their backs and gave approving caws.  
  
“Safe.” Hugin cried.  
  
“-They need names, and I think you might be interested in giving them some.”-” Elmorni said, backing off and gesturing to the machines.  
  
“Uh...uhhh..” Arne said as the soldiers nearby went from tense to alarmed, weapons stopping just short of being drawn in response to the sudden intrusion. He balked slightly at the sound of weapons being drawn and the barely audible whine of ionic weapons being readied, flinching as he looked around.  
  
“No! Don’t shoot! No shoot! They didn’t do anything!” He protested, getting an approving nod from Elmorni that made him beam a bit.  
  
“Whoa, whoa. Slow down there, are you aware of how much shit we’d be in if people tracked it?” Gyda said, a snarl forming on her face as she pulled out a pistol and aimed it at the Alimbic.  
  
“-Worry not, they come with stealth systems. They should be able to avoid just about any tracking systems available to your technology-”  
  
“Uh-huh. And you expect a three year old to make sure he never shows it to anyone?” Gyda asked.  
  
“-He does not appear to be three.-” Elmorni said, taking another gander at him while he hid somewhat close to his mother’s legs, though his attention remained quite fixed on the two Ithrak drones as they landed close to him and scuttled slightly forward, cyclopean optics fixated on him.  
  
“Three Earth years. Sorry, we don’t measure age by cosmic years.” Gyda explained while Arne offered some bread to the pair of Ithrakoids who analyzed the chemicals in the bread before snapping them up in their jaws. They pushed them towards their maws and “swallowed”, feeding them to their matter furnaces for a bit of extra power.  
  
“They like snacks!” He said cheerfully, clapping his hands.  
  
“-Now they know you’re their friends. Why don’t you play with them then?-” She said.  
  
As his fingers approached them, there were brief invisible sparks. Scans were run and completed in an eyeblink and it was determined that Arne had something that warranted a response from the machines. They locked their optics onto him and waited.  
  
“Roll over.” He said, gesturing to the ground while the Ithrakoids clenched their jaws for a moment before getting onto the ground and pushing themselves onto their back, legs in the air so that Arne had access to their carapaced bottoms. Whatever it was that he had, it was deemed important enough to make obedience necessary.  
  
“-He seems to be bright enough to have already earned your trust to remain silent about us.-” She said, looking at the display and then back to the EVA troops who murmured amongst each other as the Ithrakoids stood themselves back onto their feet.  
  
“-Having these machines will also help keep him safe, and teach him about the duties of care. Though I see you already have animal companions with him.-” She said, offering a hand to the two crows to perch on. She examined the birds and nodded before bidding them to depart.  
  
“-And finally, he seems to enjoy their company.-” She said, gesturing to Arne’s attempt to ride on the back of one which chomped its jaws in the air and lowered itself to comply. He giggled as he was suddenly boosted upwards and held tight.  
  
“That’s...th...alright fair.” Erik said, shaking his head.  
  
“Mom, dad, I know what to call them!” Arne said.  
  
“Geri and Freki.” Arne said, smiling, raising his finger to get everyone’s attention.  
  
“Odin’s wolves? You remembered the stories?” Gyda said, an enthused nod coming from Arne. He was definitely proud of what he had just did.  
  
“Uh-huh.” He responded.  
  
“-And what do you know of caring for machines like this Arne?-” Elmorni asked.  
  
“Uhm...they like food and need fixing somedays.” He said.  
  
“-And they’ll also need you to protect them just like you’ll need them to look out for you. Because you’re friends aren’t you?-” Elmorni said, her matronly mental voice sweet in the memories of those who heard it.  
  
“Uh-huh. But they’re big and metal…” He said, trying to wrap his head around how they’d need him to keep them safe.  
  
“-Well, they need you to make sure nobody who doesn’t need to know about them finds them. And one day, you will be big and strong like they are. And then you can take care of them too.-” She said, laying a hand on his shoulder, getting a flinch out of Erik and Gyda.  
  
“But that will take forever!” He whined.  
  
“-It’s never too early to help people.-” She said, touching his nose and giving him a warm, safe sensation.  
  
“And why are you giving him all this?” Ikoye asked.  
  
“-I was interested in him when I saw him in the vessel. I wanted to see how he would react to having these companions.-” She explained.  
  
“Are you sure that’s the story you want to stick with?” Gyda said, narrowing her eyes somewhat.  
  
“-I am not a liar, Gyda. Please try to contain your relentless suspicions.-” She said, as gently as she could manage.  
  
“After what happened on the ship I’m not inclined to believe you’re even capable of being nice.” Erik said, putting his right hand on his hip and frowning.  
  
“-Please try to believe me when I say that not all of us are like Zurvduat.-” She said, placing a hand over her chest. Maybe where her heart would be? It was hard to tell, but based on Gyda’s experience with Krikens who were at least somewhat visually similar it seemed like a decent guess.  
  
“Are you going to help us stay?” Thelis asked.  
  
“-You know I cannot do that, Zurvduat is my commander. I do as he wishes.-” She said with a dip of her head, perhaps a nod of some sort? Her mental voice sounded somewhat apologetic.  
  
“-Would you override the desires of your commanders?-” She asked.  
  
“Actually yes. We’re allowed to take independent initiative if needed and if those involve decide on it.”  
  
“-...Your electoral systems baffle me but I shan’t criticise.-” Elmorni said, rotating their head somewhat to express confusion.  
  
“People like mom. So they do what she says sometimes.” Arne beamed, getting a smirk out of Gyda and some chuckles from the gathered troops.  
  
“Well, thank you for the gifts but we’ve already outstayed our welcome here long enough. With luck, I’m not going to be the one who deals with you in the future.” Gyda said, getting some remarks from the gathered crew.  
  
“A little harsh there honey.” Erik whispered before getting a “someone needed to say it” from his wife in return, whispered into his ear.  
  
“Will we keep them?” Arne said, patting the heads of the Itrakoids.  
  
“We’ll talk about it.” Erik said as the gathered group began to speak amongst each other. One in the distance though seemed to be observing particularly carefully. Clad like an ordinary trooper, they seemed to fixate on the Ithrakoids longer than most of the others before they sought out Morr for contact, pulling him to the side of the crowd for a chat.  
  


_A few hours later; Command Room of the Alimbic Warship Kaisariok aka "Caesarian Lance" , Cylosis,_

  
  
  
“-So have you come to your conclusions then?-” Zurvduat asked, folding his arms behind his back as his three legs carried him to a terminal that he pulled data from with a thought. Yes, the time to leave was coming soon.  
  
“-As we expected, there is psychic potential in the human species, and many others in this current era. And unfortunately, what they said about the Empire was true.-” She said, giving the Alimbic salute of holding the left hand pointing upwards in front of the chest.  
  
“-Unfortunate. I was hoping for other survivors. Still, if we survived there is a chance there may be others in stasis or otherwise trapped. We can rebuild.-” Osith said, her mental voice tinged with some hope for the future.  
  
“-Humans might be good stock for a new warrior class in that case. Until we can replenish ourselves to the point of using true alimbic soldiery once more. Tell me, who else survives to this day?-” Zurvduat asked, turning their head towards Elmorni.  
  
“They have never heard of the Luminoth, none have seen an active N’krean, the Ylla appear to have taken some manner of journey from which they have yet to return from, the Illuranti refuse contact, the Ullmenn do not concern themselves with the present, and the Sentheni have left the bounds of charted space.” She reported, feeding her peers the data she had managed to take.  
  
“-The Chozo then?-” Ygrak asked, standing herself somewhat straighter to indicate that she wished to be heard.  
  
“-Fading. Most have either disappeared or have lost interest in matters of the material world. There seems to still be a commune on Zebes. Monks in retirement essentially. Though they urged the formation of this...Federation for peace.-” Elmorni said.  
  
“-Of course the feathered ones would grow soft. Did they think we defeated the Dominion with flowers? No matter, if they refuse to see past their beaks and want to become derelict in their responsibilities we will take up the mantle.-” Zurvduat said, getting the nodding approval of Osith, Deglos, and Urim in response.  
  
“-We are but one ship, Knight-General. How do you expect us to restore the Imperial Peace over multiple galaxies?-” Mortirk asked, his yellow armour shimmering with thought.  
  
“-We will find others, we will see who among the peoples of this time have potential and bring them into our new armies, and we will solve the crises of this era until the Imperial Peace is welcomed.-” Osith said.  
  
“-Now, what do the Engineers say of the restoration of our craft? I tire of standing in the dirt amongst savages.-” Zurvduat said.  
  
“-We will be ready to leave in less than one of Cylosis’ days.-” Urim said.  
  


_Outskirts of Fort Liberator, Cylosis_

  
The soldier who had spoken to Morr had pulled away from the masses and found their way to a special transmitter. As one of Cylosis’ famous windstorms was blowing through the area, most nonessential personnel had gone underground, and a few bluffs let them reach their destination.  
  
Carefully inserting a special bugged drive into the terminal, the suit they were wearing fed them a wealth of data as they began interfacing with it. The HUD in their helmet notified that their clearance was accepted and the symbol of the Galactic Federation appeared before them. Three crescents arranged in a circle around a dark blue circle with a yellow four-pointed star.  
  
Then the symbol of the Federal Central Intelligence Network; a yellow sun in the midst of a stylized blue spiral galaxy flashed before them. Finally, the symbol of the Reconnaissance & Advanced Intelligence Division flashed an all-seeing eye in the midst of a sun; confirming their access to the channel.  
  


_DISCONNECTING TERMINAL FROM NETWORK, STANDBY_

_DISCONNECTION COMPLETE_

_QUANTUM ENCRYPTION COMPLETE_

_AUTHORIZING, STANDBY_

_GALACTIC FEDERATION DELTA LEVEL CLEARANCE ACCEPTED  
FCIN SIGMA LEVEL CLEARANCE ACCEPTED_

_R.A.I.D TERTIUS LEVEL CLEARANCE ACCEPTED_

_WELCOME AGENT PANDORA_

_CONNECTING TO QUANTUM ENTANGLEMENT NETWORK_

_CONNECTION COMPLETE_

_UPLOADING DATA_

_UPLOAD COMPLETE_

_INCOMING COMMUNICATION, STANDBY_

_COMMUNICATION INITIATED_

  
As this terminal was temporarily disconnected from the base’s network, the contents of the conversation would be kept secret. But maintenance would be sent to check in shortly, so there was only so much time to get the report in.  
  
Fortunately, the response was prompt.

  
BANDOG: Interesting find Pandora.  
  
PANDORA: The Ensryn Volunteer Army troops are preparing to evacuate to Omyn Democratic Council Republican space.  
  
BANDOG: Then we will need to intercept quickly. We’ll bring the big guns.  
  
PANDORA: Are you certain that’s necessary, can’t we wait for them to leave and sweep up the leftovers?  
  
BANDOG: This is our best chance to eliminate the Cylosis Cell and secure access to the data they’ve gathered. We might also be able to secure the Alimbic ship in the bargain.  
  
PANDORA: Taking out an Alimbic ship of that scale would require massive firepower.  
  
BANDOG: If we don’t at least try, it will slip into the wind and we won’t be able to track it.  
  
BANDOG: Based on your report, it’s likely that Colonel Gyda has a tracer aboard the ship, but we will need her dead or captured to access it.  
  
PANDORA: And as for the civilians? Let me guess, no witnesses recommended?  
  
BANDOG: Correct.  
  
PANDORA: They have a son.  
  
BANDOG: Who does?  
  
PANDORA: The Skjǫldrs.  
  
BANDOG: Ah yes, the boy in the report.  
  
BANDOG: Possibly worth taking as leverage. Contact with Precursors makes him a person of interest. If necessary he will be terminated.  
  
PANDORA: You know I can’t be part of that.  
  
BANDOG: We are aware. That is why you will not be part of the offensive op.  
  
BANDOG: We will relay this intel to Queen Bee. Do you have an exfil plan?  
  
PANDORA: Yes. I am also prepared to die if needed.  
  
BANDOG: Should you follow the plan there will be no need for heroic sacrifices.  
  
PANDORA: Shame about the Skjǫldrs, they seem like nice people.  
  
BANDOG: A lot of people who cause a lot of harm to intergalactic peace are loving, doting parents and good friends to have in person. The Skjǫldrs are part of a paramilitary revolutionary outfit, if they wanted to stay out of the firing line they wouldn’t be playing guerilla fighter.  
  
BANDOG: Whatever happens to their son is their fault for giving birth to him on a world of military importance and remaining military personnel instead of retiring to the civilian sector to raise him.  
  
BANDOG: People die in our line of work, even kids. And sometimes even kids need to die for the sake of peace. That’s just a fact of keeping order in the cosmos. It’s not pretty but we don’t have the luxury of living in Utopia.  
  
PANDORA: Of course.  
  
BANDOG: You should also report to psych-eval, you’re getting soft. We need you sharp and ready to make hard choices.  
  
PANDORA: Of course, sir.  
  
BANDOG: We’ll keep in touch, ma’am.

She sighed and unplugged her drive and quickly stepped out before the maintenance crew could walk in through the door. She set her timer, estimating the most likely time of arrival for the RAID fleet so that she could be out of here by the time the inevitable happened. She didn’t think she could live with herself if she got to watch the dirty work up close and personal.  
  
  


* * *

Sylux's Logbook:

Organizations: Galactic Federation: Intelligence: Federal Central Intelligence Network (FCIN):

The FCIN serves as the primary intelligence bureau for the Galactic Federation and has remained in operation since its foundation. The Organization offers both internal and external services for the Federation and has generally resisted efforts to divide its powers into multiple services, instead offering differing branches for selected tasks such as domestic security, counter-terrorism, foreign espionage, counter-espionage, and Federal level criminal investigation. The FCIN reports to the Directorate which in turn is helmed by the Chief Director, who reports to the Federal government's cabinet, though there are concerns that the organization in truth has few real accountability mechanisms. These concerns have been dismissed by claims of taking "responsibility to intergalactic peace very seriously."

_Arne's notes:_

The greatest lie the FCIN ever sold people on was that they needed to get dirty in the dark to keep everyone else clean in the light.

Organizations: Galactic Federation: Black Operations: Paramilitary: Secret: FCIN Sub-Branch: Rapid Armed Intelligence Division

The R.A.I.D officially speaking, does not exist. As such its operatives wear no markings or signs of allegiance upon their power armour. As a Black Operations unit, the R.A.I.D's actions are wrapped in a veil of secrecy and deniability, even to much of the civilian government and to most of the standard military. What is known to Section 13 of the ODCOR Commissariat of Public Safety also indicates that the R.A.I.D believes that the refusal of governments such as the Federation and Omdyn to get as "dirty" as the Space Pirates or the Kriken Empire hold them back, and that to ensure national security hard choices will have to be made. Section 13 reports also indicate that the R.A.I.D is obsessed with securing any sort of advantage for itself and the Federation, in that order.

_Arne's notes_ :

The black-ops goons are recruited from those whose psychological profiles suggest a willingness to follow any orders, no matter how cruel or dangerous. Some latitude is given to higher-level operators, but most of them will take a blast to the head if ordered. That's what makes them dangerous.

Fauna: Sapient: Domesticated: Earth Native: Corvids: Domestic Ravens

Following the advancement of Earthborn genetics technologies, Corvids were quickly edited to be ideal pets in the same vein as dogs and cats. Domestic Ravens are distinguished from their wild counterparts by their more approachable temperaments and unusual sizes and coat colours, coming in a wide variety of breeds suiting many differing tastes for those seeking avian companionship. One of the most popular breed, the Odinnic Ravens, have an average wingspan of over two meters and weigh at three and a half kilograms, roughly comparable to medium-sized eagles.

_Arne's notes_ :

I've always been fond of birds, maybe it's because my name means "Eagle"? But there's something special about ravens in my opinion. Just the way they look at you so inquisitively...anyway, people who don't have the space to let them fly around really shouldn't keep them. Birds need to stretch their wings.

Mechanoids: Alimbic Make: Organic Replicants: Ithrakids

Built to mimic the mighty Ithraks who shared much of the core territory of the Alimbics, Ithrakids can be considered a superior mechanical take on the same concepts. Like the Ithraks, Ithrakids are largely invulnerable to most frontal firepower and are only truly harmable by attacking from their rear angles of attack. As part of the Alimbic mastery of spacetime manipulation technologies, they are capable of rapidly and frequently teleporting to a substantial degree of accuracy and can use this technology offensively or defensively. Multiple weapon systems are also fitted into them, akin to that of the more well known Guardian drones.

_Arne's notes:_

It's worth noting that they're able to take up a lot less space than you'd think when they enter storage mode, especially when there's a stronghold void for them to retreat to. This comes in pretty handy, even when I don't need them out and about at the moment.


	5. Dragon's Den (SA)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A Dragon gathers his pirate crew

# Chapter 5(SA): Dragon's den

_Star Leviathan “Scourge of Heaven” Commander’s bridge, Orbit of Izmot, Gellar’s Verge, Andromeda Galaxy. Population: Formerly 133,789,918,317. Currently: 0._

The warship _Scourge of Heaven_ was an infamous one. The personal flagship of the brutal enforcer of the Confederacy of Dismor; better known as the Space Pirates. It was a ship that had seen the deaths of untold trillions of sentients, the razing of thousands of worlds, the extermination of hundreds of species. Built like a great flying wing with prominent engines that offset similarly massive cannons, the craft was larger than many cities at roughly than thirty-six kilometres long and twelve kilometres deep and more than a hundred and thirty-two kilometres wide.

Rumours abounded about how the ship was originally painted a different shade altogether but acquired its nightmarish rust red and ash grey hue from the blood of all the beings it had overseen the deaths of and the ash of all the worlds it had left smouldering ruins in its wake.

Already a planet just below it was smouldering. Izmot bore scars that could be seen from space. Debris blasted from the planet larger than tectonic plates were cooling within its orbit, some falling back onto the world while others were fragmenting into a ring system. Perhaps given time they might even form a moon.

At least, one to replace the moon that had been destroyed. The grave of twelve billion souls eradicated by the fleet that clustered around the _Scourge of Heaven_. This whole system was once thriving with billions, it was now devoid of even microbial life. Everything save for its murderers.

Wrecked starships drifted through the void of space before the Scourge’s escort fleet, corpses floating out of rents in their armour. What stragglers there were in escape pods or armour suits were being picked off by bored gunners and fighter pilots or dragged towards the armada for far worse fates.

The Commander inside, the architect behind this atrocity was a name spoken of in fear. A loathsome monster who melded the most threatening aspects of a Dragon and a Pterosaur. A pteranodon like head had a hooked beak full of razor-sharp teeth, seemingly emaciated arms covered in purple carapace and scales bore wicked claws caked in blood. Bat like wings emerged from either side and stretched for more than thirty-three meters. Even lowered into a crawling quadrupedal posture the six-limbed menace was thirteen meters tall, and his body extended more than thirty-six meters long to the very tip of his scorpion barbed tail when he fully extended his long, thin, crane-like neck.

His gaunt face had hateful, burning yellow eyes recessed into the well-protected sockets, facing forwards to give him the depth perception of the apex predator he was. His long, pointed and green tongue licked blood that had dried on his arm and his body shook with chills. The memories of the violence he had committed to get that blood made him so excited. He almost forgot that he was in a meeting. And he remembered that he was supposed to make a response to his superiors who had just given him orders. Orders he didn’t like.

“You want me to take a whole fleet to do what?” Ridley snarled with contempt, his purple jaws snapping with displeasure as the shadowy silhouettes of the Cartel Bosses, Mafia Capos, Raider Clan Chiefs, Nomad Warrior Kings, Fascist Dictators, and Junta Generalissimos who made up space pirate high command addressed him from the other side of the screen.

“Seize the planet K-2L and its Afloraltite stockpiles before the convoys arrive, then set up an ambush and pillage the convoy ships.” One of the figures, the Crimson Reaper of the Sondheim Sector; one of the cosmos’ most infamous contraband lords, said. Their insectoid claws tapped against the table and Ridley tightened his expression.

“That’s grunt work. There can’t be more than ten million people on that miserable rock.” He growled in protest. He was feeling the sanguine fury rising again, he needed to kill or else he was going to lose his temper. He needed to eat...he needed to….he’d handle that later he figured.

“The Afloraltite may be declining in value as a fuel in the face of fuel gel assisted zero point energy...but there’s other uses we can find for it. Science team has sent a report that I am quite sure you have read on an interesting proposal.” Gulrach the Magnificent, the brutal autocrat of the Temir expanse said, all four of her hands clasping together.

“If I may speak?” Weavel said, the insectoid pirate Grand Marshal adjusting the helmet of their office as he gazed upon High Command. He got a pregnant pause for just a few seconds before the Grand Marshal was humoured with a nod from the central figure. The silhouette of an Urtraghian pirate in fully concealing grey and yellow armour with a menacing-looking cloak and helm; unnervingly undecorated, sitting in the least ostentatious chair of them all.

He was simply called the Despot, nobody need know him as anything else. In an organization held together by collective greed, fear of reprimand, and loathing of those without the Confederacy more than those within, the Despot was the one who brought the riches, the one who commanded the most fear, and the one who knew how to avoid open hatred against his reign. As such, within this confederacy of malcontents and hatemongers he was _God._

“Why do you need a fleet of our prestige and acclaim to do such a simple task? We are a fleet for waging pitched battle in the void and conquering supersectors. Not pissing around with a handful of colonists.” He said. Ridley snorted and didn’t give him some manner of hate-filled expression which was about as much respect as he afforded anyone or anything.

“Because, Grand Marshal; K-2L is a planet directly colonized by Earth. They will likely be furious once you dispose of the wastes of oxygen. We might need the muscle to teach the Federation’s fleets some respect for our boundaries.” Ezrigil Gaskurik, a crime boss who had fingers in pies ranging from Kriken high nobility to military-industrial complex accounting fraud said. The pincered hands of the pirate snapped with ill-disguised intent, and his glowing eyes were more than a touch unnerving to look at.

“Bah, I’d be surprised if we had more than half an hour of playtime before everyone on the planet is dead. An hour, if we really let ourselves have a bit of fun.” Ridley sneered.

“Furthermore, the planet seems to be of interest to the Chozo. They visited recently within the last rotational cycle.” The Technocrat said, the representative from science team’s mechanical optics zooming in a bit further.

“Chozo? What could they possibly want with a bunch of miners?” Weavel said quizzically, extending his head forward somewhat.

“Clearly the old geezers have decided to indulge in some proleterianism in their old age before their creaky bones give out.” Ridley cackled. His laughter was unpleasant to hear, like sandpaper grinding against chalkboards with the aid of a sword sharpener wheel with occasional motor hiccups.

“Noted. We expect you to do this work quickly and efficiently. We do not want you to waste our time.” The Chief of Chiefs, Uzik Blegl ululated, their soft invertebrate body sloshing within their tank as Ridley thought of his next comeback.

“Oh so you’re pulling me in because Kraid got lost on the way to the next buffet is that it huh? Or maybe Draygon’s too busy practising her whale song? Or the other hack job monster movie rejects you call enforcers you get on the line when you can’t get me all just can't make the cut so you gotta pull me from my work to deal with petty rookie shit?” He snapped his jaws with ill-disguised violent intent.

“Kraid does not waste time on pointless cruelties that make it harder to get live subjects. We accept your indulgences because you deliver results and they strike terror into our enemies. Do not believe yourself irreplaceable, Geoform 187.” Generalissimo Zarkan said, a reptilian hiss coming from their throat as their compound eyes glowed strange colours. The use of his designation made Ridley see blood for a moment as his blood rage rose to the surface. He couldn’t strike back at High Command, but lashing out at Kraid? That he could do.

“Oh is that what that obese green piece of shit thinks? Tell him to come here and I’ll jab those beady little eyes of his one by one out with his own spikes, then we’ll see if the fat f-” Ridley didn’t get to finish the sentence as the Despot raised his hand again and everyone fell silent immediately. Even Ridley lowered himself, virtually prostrate before the Despot.

 _Nobody_ spoke over the Despot. Every pirate hung unto the shadowy figure’s raised hand, making no noise lest they commit the crime of interrupting him while he spoke. And he was merciful enough to make that wait short.

“If you perform well, I have a task more to your liking.” He said in a clinical, cold voice that could make lava cool instantly, sending the cunning god of death details on an ecumenopolis with several trillion poorly defended people weakened by siege and raids waiting to be finished off.

Ridley’s snarl became something arguably far worse.

A smile.

Then a laugh.

A laugh that would make even all the hordes of hell cower in fear.

* * *

_Warship “Scourge of Heaven” briefing room._

"Shape up you cretins we've got killing to do today." Ridley barked at the gathered pirate officers within the expansive, circular briefing room, shaped like a stadium in reverse, with all the gathered individuals looking up at those giving the orders rather than looking down upon a lecturer.

"See this planet? K-2L? Earth colony, bunch of underequipped good for nothing miners there digging out afloraltite before the Fuel Gel industry puts them all on unemployment. Any of you got any questions before we start the briefing? Come on, I know all of you have something to say. Speak up so I know what to stab you over later." He said, he clearly hated the task of giving these briefings but

"That's it? Some batch of jumped up mining towns? You could get any two-bit ship and its crew to loot those striplings." Ivax growled. The somewhat seal-like amphibious beast yipped in laughter shortly afterwards, bearing hyena-like teeth while dragging themselves forward with clawed flippers. A long neck held a somewhat shark like head full of triangular teeth, and the long thrashing tail behind her slapped the ground to emphasise her point.

"Think of this as a downtime operation. We will be moving onto greater targets shortly afterwards. Will that be all or do you have more whining to air?" Weavel snorted calmly. He kept his hands behind his back, and nodded in a satisfied manner once Ivax backed down and exhaled in a displeased but accepting manner.

"This is a simple operation. Based on publicly available records, the stores of afloraltite are located here." Weavel said, tapping the holographic map so that a number of designation markers popped up showing coordinates and indicators across the representation of the planet.

"Biggest haul is here, near the Neorai forests. Largest populated area on the planet. About a million or so people, mostly civvies. We're estimating maybe about two divisions worth of security forces. Nothing we couldn't steamroll blindfolded. We have the numbers and the element of surprise so try not to kill everyone too quickly." Ridley said, snapping his jaw like a crocodile in irritation at the thought of how soon this would all be over.

"What's wrong with easy loot?" Hunter Corvus said, her beetle-like mandibles, thin body, long black shoulder pads, cap-like helm, and a transparent plate that allowed her beating heart to be seen marking her as an Azigoth. She had insect-like cyborg wings grafted to her back, and her hateful orange eyes seemed to intently relish the prospect of violence. She clenched her carapaced fingers into fists and thumped her chest as she approached Kutlak, staring him down and daring him to make a move.

"Do you have anything actually worthwhile to say or are you just going to spout more inanities Corvus?" Weavel said, snapping his mandibles in irritation. When he got no response from her he decided to proceed.

"Now, the primary risk of this raid is the Federal response. A number of patrol fleets can respond in under a single rotational cycle. We can swat them out of orbit but they put our supply shuttles at risk. As such, I want stealth teams to neutralise the comm systems. The Afloraltite is going to have to be left alone until we deal with resistance, then the extraction teams will unseal the vaults and pack them onto the shuttles sending them back to the ship. After that; we can do whatever we want with the planet." Weavel said, getting a number of cheers from the crowd as the display graphic demonstrated the simulated outcomes of the plan he suggested, simple but effective.

"And what of the fleet?" Strategos Zeknin said, the heavily cyborgized fleet commander's clawed feet gripping for purchase in the ground. Their body was so twisted from whatever they were originally was that there were betting pools on what they were like before. But the rather spindly cyborg's elongated skull-like "face" and its compound eyes were always more than a bit disconcerting to stare into, the white of their ceramic plating an unpleasant bone like hue and the metal portions a cold shade of silver. Two and a half meters tall, their body was like the skeleton of some creature with four legs and four arms arrayed radially, split into three independently rotating sections as he continually shifted from one position to the next, seemingly unable to stand still.

The large, fierce form of a machine skittered into view atop four spidery legs that held aloft a cylindrical body with a rounded turret of sorts upon it, yellow optics looking out at the world accompanied by the unpleasant incandescent glow of their yellow highlights. The purple and dark green machine's armatures bore heavy rotary weapons fitted with bayonets at the top and deadly pincer cannons at the bottom for comb at at any range, and the powerful machine seemed unafraid to approach the others as they focused their optics on the Strategos. "Enemy Fleet Presence: Negligible. Estimation: Surface support actions and nothing more."

"Another quiet operation then?" The Grand Strategos said. A hope lingered in their voice, the hope for naval martial glory and

"Correct." AAE-13 responded.

"Allow me to give the order then; we will see High Command's will be done." The Cyborg said.

"What? You want to be the one to tell the fleets to jump to N-Space? Sure, fine." Ridley said.

"Now do we have any questions we have to answer before we slip our moors and head out?" Weavel asked.

"Query: Identity of the Commander of Federal Mining operations on K-2L?" AAE-13 asked.

"Eh? Who needs to know about stuff like that! They're all going to be dead soon anyway." Hunter Corvus snorted with laughter. What a ridiculous idea, questioning about the identity of some no-name mining colony foreman.

"Perhaps it might give us a name to remember this operation by. I am certain some of you would take pleasure in such reminders." The Strategos said, their low voice oddly quiet despite their rather menacing figure.

"Give me a second." Weavel said, inputting the query into the database and bringing up some holographic displays showing someone whom Weavel assumed was handsome by human standards but to him just looked like a soft-skinned freak.

"Rodney Aran. Part of the Sirian Mining Co-Operative and the Intergalactic Worker's Association. Decently high up the chain of both but ultimately nobody of real import." Weavel said as he looked through the data.

"Oooh a Union man. That means he probably cares deeply about his co-workers. Wouldn't it be fun to hold that against him? Social species always have the most fun responses to watching their friends die, especially those in those big social movements." Ridley chuckled, the laugh low and sinister.

"So what? He's nobody. Won't even be valuable enough to ransom." Ivax snorted, steam billowing out of her blowhole as she shook her head.

"Query: Family?" AAE-13 asked.

"Ah right, social species and their families. So much concern for people they stick eggs into or hatched from them. It's almost sad how much they care for people who get them horny or share some DNA with." Ridley sneered.

"A wife named Virginia and a daughter named Samus, three Earth years old. Hrm...maybe his union might pay ransom for the children and spouses. Or there are other uses we could consider to heighten our standing in the eyes of High Command.." Weavel said coldly and matter of factly.

"Agreement: Genetic stock for slave husbandry trade, product for illicit prostitution industry, and valuable live subjects for experimentation. Evaluation: Live subjects may be of use." AAE-13 said.

"Tch, the pervert mongers and whip crackers? You really want to hang around those bottom feeders?" Corvus laughed.

"Statement: Profit is profit." AAE-13 countered.

"Hrm...I don't like to give my toys away for some trinkets though. Ooh I'd really rather just kill them all, maybe keep a few for ourselves. How about that? We could keep some and hunt them for sport sometimes. Maybe they'll last longer than the last batch." Ridley said, tapping his beak with his razor-like claws as he pondered the question.

"We will simply have to see what can be done as the situation unfolds." The Strategos said, clasping their many arms together and remaining mostly silent otherwise as they interfaced with the Ship's command systems.

* * *

**Samus' Logbook**

Individuals: War Criminals: Confederacy of Dismor: Unknown Space Dragons: Male: Enforcers: Ridley

Geoform 187, more frequently known as Ridley is the only known and confirmed member of his as of yet nameless species. His origins, parentage, and his history before signing on with the confederacy of Dismor's military is unknown. What interviews with him have surfaced paint contradictory and disturbing images of his past. What is known, however, is that he prides himself on his nature as a member of a solitary species and disdains the customs of most social species. He is considered to be completely lacking in any capacity for empathy or altruistic thought or sensation, and has an extensive record of war crimes. All he cares for is his own amusement, and his easily bored nature has lead to an inventive mind for pointless cruelty and a master of personal combat. Despite the popularity of trying to ascribe mental illness to Ridley, he is seemingly entirely functional for whatever standards his species has. He simply does not care to indulge in what he sees as the alien virtues of empathy.

**Samus' Notes**

What is there to say about the "Cunning God of Death"? That he's cruel? That he's evil? That he doesn't care about other life? I want to believe that there's good in everyone, and that anyone can be anyone else's friend in the right circumstances. But I've never seen anything like that in him. The joy he feels is always born of someone else's misery. But it doesn't matter, no matter where he hides, I will find him and I'll give everyone he's ever hurt peace. 

Individuals: War Criminals: Confederacy of Dismor: Bermukadil: Male: Grand Marshals: Weavel

Grand Marshal Weavel is a lifelong military careerist whose military record is considered both beyond reproach and beyond the pale. Weavel is a hard and uncompromising commander with a preference for leading from the front to be in the thick of conflict. His disdainful attitude towards the rules of war have lead to the deaths of countless planets worth of sapient beings. Weavel is renown for strict disciplinarian attitudes with the sole exception of the time to "unwind", typically in the form of destructive looting and pillaging. Weavel later came to be attached to Enforcer Ridley's war pack to take over the "drudgery" of command duties after Ridley expressed boredom with them. Weavel by all accounts takes his duties very seriously and is an expert in keeping Ridley focused. Weavel is brutally pragmatic, and rarely indulges in what he considers to be frivolities but this means little for the victims of his armies. 

**Samus' Notes**

Weavel is almost as bad as Ridley. He's a careerist always looking for another rung on the ladder to climb and every time he looks at the world with those compound eyes of his it's like he's trying to think of where to put a statue of himself. There's nothing he won't step on if it means pushing himself a bit higher and in the entire time I've tracked him he's always been on the hunt to advance his career in one way or the other.

Individuals: War Criminals: Confederacy of Dismor: Cyborg: Unknown Species: Genderless: Grand Strategos: Zenkin

The Steel Conqueror of a Thousand Sectors and the butcher of Elar, Zenkin's calm and placid exterior is a clever disguise for their immense capacity for violence, something that has attracted them to Ridley's outfit. Whatever species they originally were has long been buried under more than a century of constant augmentation and replacement, leaving only the metal master of fleets. Zenkin is regarded as somewhat servile, willing to follow through with virtually any of Ridley's missives and showing deference to Weavel despite being of equivalent ranks. This lack of personal career initiative is a small mercy however, as their battlelust is with few comparisons. They are always on the hunt for further and greater naval martial glories, and revel in the vicious melee of voidborne warfare. Zenkin is also renown for their capabilities as a torturer, one of their personal vices that they indulge in to pass the long idle periods of waiting for future void engagements.

**Samus' Notes**

It's hard to get a read on Zenkin, in my observations they stick mostly to their ships. Like being on the ground is some sort of curse to them. That being said, there's definitely something beneath the facade of the war hungry falcon looking for the next hunt. Something that only feels alive when it has its talons dug into something thrashing beneath its feet.

Individuals: War Criminals: Confederacy of Dismor: Urmikal: Female: Hunter: Corvus

Corvus is a barely contained whirlwind of sadistic violence who has fallen into Ridley's good graces through mutual fondness for destruction. Though Ridley is incapable of friendship, Corvus is considered one of Ridley's kindred spirits and the Skykiller sometimes even deigns to fight alongside the enforcer. Corvus keeps her real name, origins, and the full list of her augmentations and weapons deeply under wraps. Experts have theorised that Corvus is the product of some sort of super soldier program to create the next breed of aeropirate warriors and was originally of the pirate species from the mysterious capital world of Urtraghus. If such a theory is true, then Corvus has likely succeeded most expectations as she is a ruthless air commander with few equals or rivals. Corvus also has a marked case of Pyromania, and has been disciplined many times for starting blazes pointlessly.

**Samus' Notes**

Corvus is about what you'd expect of the space pirate aerocorps. She's a dog looking for a scrap and a fire looking for fuel. Corvus lives from moment to moment, and her addiction to the thrill is what drives her every second of her life. She's an addict essentially, and her drug of choice is anything that can get the adrenaline flowing.

Individuals: War Criminals: Confederacy of Dismor: Star Bunyip: Female: Enforcer: Ivax

Ivax is rather like Ridley in the sense that her true species is unknown and she seems to be a member of a solitary species, or at the very least one with a highly divergent form social structure. Ivax is a brutal bully who enjoys predating on those weaker than she is but is wary of confrontation with perceived betters. An ambush predator at heart, Ivax often resents the greater glory of Ridley due to his flight capabilities allowing him to see considerably more action than her. However, when her skills are needed in deployments to watery or acidic environments she truly shines as a nightmare made manifest, and her ravenous appetite for the flesh of sapient beings is widely renown to the point wherein many societies children are scared into obedience by threats of Ivax coming from the waters to devour them.

**Samus' Notes**

Ivax is a predator through and through and like most predators she backs out of any fight she feels she can't win. She's a coward, but her belly provides her with the motivation she needs to overcome that trepidation of fights with people who might actually win against her. But that just makes her more of a meanspirited bully when you get to the very core of her being. She barks like a dog for people she fears but just lashes out more against those she makes feel fear.

Individuals: War Criminals: Confederacy of Dismor: Synthetic: Agendered: War Champion: AAE-13

AAE-13 (Automated Assault Enforcer) is a brutal pragmatist who prefers to handle most situations through carefully aimed applications of the greatest possible amounts of firepower. Constructed at extreme expense by Event Horizon Solutions Limited, AAE-13 defected to the space pirates when Confederate forces arrived at the Defense company's testing facility station to steal everything of interest. Finding the Space Pirates to offer more interesting operating conditions, AAE-13 slaughtered most of the engineers at the facility after forcibly extracting most of their memories. Since then, they fell into the graces of Enforcer Ivax and Ridley to partake in the activities of their fleet. AAE-13 is not as emotionless as they seem, they crave the carnage of warfare and the interesting problems offered by challenging battles. They may not revel in cruelty, but they indulge in battle for its own sake as the ultimate test for their processing capabilities. This has left a long and bloody trail of lives shattered by their addiction to violence.

**Samus' Notes**

AAE-13 is not emotionless. They're prideful, they want to demonstrate their superiority and maintain their killing edge at all times. They fear obsolescence and want to show that they are still as good as it gets. I think that I can get into their head through that angle. They might be the least malicious of Ridley's crew, but the sort of killing intent they have in their processors still needs to be put to rest; and that pride might be exploited to bring about their fall.


	6. Smoke Filled Boardrooms (AS)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A conspiracy to destroy the people of Cylosis is born

_Round Table class Star Leviathan “Mordred”, Messer cluster, Pinwheel Galaxy_

  
  
The _Mordred_ officially did not exist. Neither did its owners. Its sightings were the stuff of discredited crackpot conspiracy theorists on lonely sections of the hypernet, yet it was here all the same. One Hundred Sixty Eight kilometers from stem to stern, eighty one from port to starboard, twenty from top to bottom. It rarely moved from its position all that often, but it rarely needed to.  
  
It was a terrifying testament to the power of those who built it, and its ominous feldgrau and forest camo green hull glimmered with small lights from various external systems. A mobile base of operations as much as it was a warship. One able to serve as the mothership for military operations across an entire sector without the inconvenience of putting down roots.  
  
Perfect for a Division that’s not supposed to exist.  
  
A much smaller ship exited N-Space near the _Mordred_ , its stealth systems dropping briefly to let the Mordred know not to fry it the moment it appeared. Slender strike craft emerged from the Mordred’s cavernous hull and flanked the canard winged intruder after rushing towards it as it came to a halt relative to the Mordred’s path through space.  
  
“+This is callsign Morifax requesting contact with Black Knight over.+”  
  
“+This is ISWACS designated “Laser Hound”, welcoming callsign Morifax to Black Knight. Please confirm intent to land.+”  
  
“+This is Morifax; I will roger that, requesting permission to access hangars.+”  
  
“+Granted, safe landing and good luck Morifax. Laser Hound over and out.+”  
  
The ship slid through the openings in the defensive screens and extended its landing gears, putting down its roots and opening up to allow a sinuous, silvery shape coalesce into the appearance of a jet black carapaced insectoid and then a more human woman; albeit with a skin tone a shade of pink unlikely without modifications. A stream of small creatures seemed to follow her, keeping within her line of sight but not quite making themselves stand out.  
  
A squad of basics was at the ready, while turrets in the hangar kept focused on her at all times and a number of drones and mechanoids stood at the ready. She offered a small wave and folded her arms, a smug smile present on her face.  
  
The squad’s commander stepped forward, with their heavy armour at odds with the silence they were making their movements with. Smoothly angled pauldrons that flared at their ends sat atop arms clad in clean, symmetrical armour plates, the chest was hidden beneath a few neatly interlocked armour plates that made discerning sex or even species beyond a vague range of humanoids impossible. The Feldgrau and Dark Olive Green Armour was without insignia or unit identification. The R.A.I.D officially did not exist, there was no need to out themselves as members. The boots were heavy, enough so to immediately sink to the bottom of water without worrying about flotation. The abdominal armour was made of a number of vertically stacked segmented plates, giving an almost milipede look to the belly area.  
  
Their helmet; rounded at the top in a vaguely stahlhelm esque manner with a visor somewhat like a riot officer that partly was covered by a pronounced mouth shield that covered everything below the eyes, a sun and shrapnel shield extending about a finger length forward to shroud the visor, leaving only narrow eye slits to glow a decidedly menacing shade of blue.. The helmet made no sound as it processed air for the user, and the tubes that connected back into the helmet didn't so much as flinch with their breaths. In their hands; which were rather prominently fitted with electroshock knuckle dusters; was a menacing looking longarm, built more like a small rocket launcher that happened to have a magazine than a standard gun, with a meaty looking grenade tube just below and a wicked looking top fitted bayonet.  
  
“Operator Mercy, I wasn’t expecting you back so soon.” They said. Their accent was relatively neutral, a human of another era might have compared it to some midway point between the American and British newscaster accents, but the coldness to their tone was something that would be immediately threatening to most.  
  
“You know I’m not going to deny requests from the boss, Commander Arthur.” She said, adjusting the peaked cap her shapeshifted form came with.  
  
“Request is an interesting choice of words, Operator. You’re still the last one here, and you know how some of them feel about late arrivals.” He said, motioning for her to come with him.  
  
“Where else are they going to find another shapeshifting psyker?” She snorted, clearly dismissive to the veiled threat in his words.  
  
“Don’t tempt them. Ma’am.” He said.  
  
“Hrm, and what if I wanted to go by something else?” She said with a catty questioning hum at the end as she leaned forward to try and get a rise out of Arthur.  
  
“Then out of professional courtesy I’ll call you by whatever disguise you’re rolling with. For now though, with me ma’am.” He said, shooting down her effort  
  
“So, who else is there?” She asked.  
  
“Everyone else in Dead Hand Alpha.” He said simply.  
  
“What’s got the crew together?”  
  
“You’ll know when you’re in the briefing area and not a second before. You know the rules about trying to extract intel you’re not supposed to know with that telepathy of yours.” He said as they walked towards a transport station near the hangar. With the size of the Mordred simply walking around was impractical, so the ship was spider-webbed with internal supersonic mag-trains with personnel taking the lighter blue rail and freight going with the heavier chrome rail.  
  
The train shut its doors as soon as the greenlight was transmitted from their pass cards and then shot forward. Shields wrapped around the rail tunnels prevented the sonic booms from having any unwanted effects, and the train needed to change route a few times to avoid the movements of other trains. Each jolt was virtually unnoticed however, and the train rapidly deccelerated as it approached its final destination.  
  
The usual procession of guards waited for the train’s doors to dilate open and for the passengers to exit, automated defenses watching every step of the way.  
  
A black haired woman in rather form fitting dark coloured armour was busy leaning against a wall passing the time on a video game she had installed into her suit, her helmet sat down on a table next to her.  
  
She was pleasant on the eyes for sure, though Mercy wasn’t fond of her perpetually flat expression as if she was forever unimpressed by what she saw. Her hair, kept in twin tails, was long but neatly kept, and her features suggested her ancestry mostly came from the Earth continent of Asia.  
  
She flicked her gaze upwards as Mercy approached, and the flat expression on her face drew a slight frown. The small spaulders on her suit’s shoulders lowered as she sighed through her nose, and she folded her arms over the modest chestplate of her suit.  
  
“You’re late.” She said.  
  
“Keik-” Mercy said before Dagger raised her left index finger in protest and hardened her expression.  
  
“We are not and never will be on a name basis. It’s just Operator Dagger to you.” She said.  
  
“Still mad about me and your br-” Dagger interrupted Mercy again.  
  
“You flirt with both me and Operator Cloak constantly when I’ve told you to stop multiple times. And you took advantage of him while he was drunk, Mercy. So yes, I am mad.” She said.  
  
“You really are no fun at all.” Mercy sneered with contempt. She shifted form once again. She was really not quite as good at infiltration as one would expect of a shapeshifter due to her arrogance and inability to suppress her urge to show off or properly prevent people from identifying her tells, but she was more than able to use it in battle.  
  
Something more akin to her true visage flowed from her guise as her shifting quicksilver like body spread its mass out into a spidery beast as large as a whole family of Tyrannosauruses. A thicket of limbs speared into the ground while wriggling tendrils flowed out, ending in narrow spikes while hexagonal grid shapes appeared on her “skin” as the creatures rejoined their central mass like water pooling together.  
  
A maw ringed by tendrils expelled hot breath at Dagger who continued to just stare at her without the slightest hint of flinching. Not even the scorpion like tail Mercy extended out got her to move, only making her curl her fingers more tightly around one of her namesake daggers.  
  
“Why won’t you give me even the littlest ounce of satisfaction?” Mercy grumbled as she began to shift back into her prior form, her mass splitting apart to let her resume humanoid scale. A scowl was on her face, seething and bitter.  
  
“Shut up and get inside.” Dagger growled.  
  
“Operators of the Dead Hand huh?” One of the RAID troopers snorted before Mercy, Dagger, and Arthur turned to stare at the trooper who let out a nervous cough and tried to move out of everyone else’s line of sight after a meek apology.

The next door retracted open to let the procession through. But already there was someone who was clearly displeased with being made to wait. A Saurian with a horizontal body posture like some resurrected Dinosaur busily calibrated his rifle before looking at them and flicking out his forked tongue from his varanid like head. His S-shaped neck brought that head up somewhat more reared itself up to bring him to more proper face to face contact level with Mercy as he studied her, the bionic eye he had fitted to their right side a telltale mark of someone who made a living as a sniper. The attachment points on his armour however, hinted at the usage of the Shadow Mech he was even more well known for than his skill with a marksman's weapon.  
  
“I trust that you have good reason for your tardiness.” He said, his crest raising itself with interest. His grey scaled skin seemed like so much rock, and his nimble hands’ claws tapped against his sniper rifle repeatedly. He seemed slender, almost insignificant without his mech, but his raptorian gaze was intense enough to make even Mercy flinch as he licked his eyes like some overgrown gecko, the slitted pupil on his one remaining true eye expanding to let in more light while the sickle like big toe claws on both feet tapped against the ground in a subtle rhythm.  
  
“I had some complicated issues to work out Veil.” Mercy said.  
  
“I hope for your sake you’re going to be more thorough than that in the report. Which you are going to file, Operator, no excuses.” Veil said, adding a reptilian cough for emphasis as they sloped their stance to make themselves a bit taller.  
  
“As for you Dagger, you’re going to need to watch your temper. Continue to report for psych evaluation, I want you to have your head on straight and I don’t want a repeat of your hesitation on Elax Secundus.” Veil hissed.  
  
“So glad to see being free from consequence does such wonders for the moral integrity of this unit.” Dagger muttered, rubbing her fingers around the hilt of one of her knives. She didn’t give Veil one of her usual hard stares, but she did find herself wishing she could make him shut up somehow.  
  
“We are not here to concern ourselves with petty civilian or green ops hang ups. So I advise you to drop it. You’re a soldier now, and we need results.” Veil said, craning their head closer to Dagger’s face as her neutral expression became a genuine frown.  
  
“Now, now, now; that’s no way to treat our friends in arms!” A big, loud voice said. A mustached man with a heavy square face and an aristocratic countenance stepped into the room. Even without his new suit he’d be a mountain of muscle. His dishwater blond hair and heavy sideburns completed the look of a proper bully boy, and speaking of his suit…  
  
The armour was built surprisingly on the lighter side, with heavily articulated blue coloured plating. As one would expect from a black ops unit that did not officially existed, he bore no insignia to mark him as a member of RAID, just the icon of a skeletal hand on his pauldrons. His skull like helmet was couched in his left arm, and the grin on his face could only be described as far too pleased with himself.  
  
“Cyrus.” Veil said, giving him a nod.  
  
“Now let’s not fault Dagger for having a conscience or Mercy for taking her time. We are all supposed to be good soldiers here.” He said, clapping his hands on the two women’s shoulders and grinning before letting them go.  
  
Dagger tensed at the sensation but allowed it, not wanting to have to file an incident report for her discomfort at the unwanted contact.  
  
“So where’s the rest? Come on, I can’t be the only one who was late here.” Mercy asked, after peeling herself away from Cyrus’ grasp, cupping her hands in front of her mouth to amplify her voice.  
  
“I was wondering when you’d show up. Luckily it’s not me who’s going to be chewed out by the bosses this time. But if you want to stay in command’s good graces, I recommend working on your punctuality.” The baritone voice of Quietus said, the slender mechanoid almost seeming to manifest from the ether. Stilt like limbs scrambled for purchase on the ground, points splitting into starfish like feet tipped with claws to grab at the ground like a hawk. A blank screen like face wrapped around by a helm not too unlike those of the usual RAID troopers and all too long arms ending in radially arranged claw hands were by far the most distinctive part of their upper body, while a subtly V shaped torso with another screen; circular in shape; at the centre of the chest connected the digitrade legs to the limbs and head. Flat pauldrons formed their shoulders, and mechandrite tentacles waved around their body, emerging from their waist like coiling tails.  
  
"It would be a shame to have to see you be reassigned because you slacked on your form filling. Where would we be without your pointless flirtations?" They intoned.  
  
“Come on Quietus, not all of us can just spit out our reports the second we need to fill them out. Unlike you, I've got more important things to cram into my head than cyberwarfare suites.” She said, pivoting to look Quietus in their cold, blank face as she gave the machine a daring look, almost as if she wanted to start a fight between the two of them.  
  
“I would very much like to skip the small talk and get to the business at hand. ” Dagger grumbled to herself.  
  
“So we are in agreement then, let us begin.” A cold voice said as the room began to drop in temperature noticeably. Static electricity began to build up and a shape started to descend from one of the air mobility shafts. Mercy paused briefly before turning around and shivered slightly at the drop in the temperature, tensing in anticipation.  
  
“We will begin this meeting now.” A second, slightly higher pitched voice followed, very close to the first.  
  
“Speak and interrupt if you’re feeling daring, or be like good dogs and keep quiet.” The third, shrillest voice said, also only a little bit far away from the others. Gusts of air were blown away, crackling with some static energy and cold as winter as two hooved feet slammed into the ground.

A huge shape dipped to the ground, with yellow fur and cyan osteoderms and scutes covering the body as its digitigrade legs buckled from the impact, wings like a great and terrible pterosaur used as forelimbs as their claws flattened, the rear digits that held the membranous wings together folding up for convenience. Two whip-like tails ending in spiked, mace-like clubs with unpleasant sneering faces swung around behind this mighty body as it rose.

One head, on a neck like a combination of a serpent and a giraffe arose, its stag horns curling somewhat downwards. The head, like a stag’s skull with false eye pits in front of its true eyes; a cold and unforgiving blue, had rows of sharp teeth with pronounced snake-like fangs. Then the second rose from the cover of its wings, its horns curling upwards, its face somewhat longer. Then the middle head pulled itself up, its horns curling outwards and its somewhat broader head looked upwards and let out a high pitched, shrieking call that resonated with itself, a bell-like reverberation being heard as a gust of cold air emerged from the head.

Adder, Cobra, and Mamba, the left, centre, and right heads of a great and terrible beast. Together, they were Viper. Even in this low, quadrupedal stance they stood twenty meters at the shoulders, from nostril to tail they extended for some eighty meters in length, and their wings would have spanned more than eighty-two meters if fully extended. Though certainly not possessing Ridley’s grace or agility, Viper had a similarly unmistakable menace that commanded obedience.

Cobra snapped their jaws to call the gathered Operators to order, and flicked out a forked tongue to sniff the air.  
  
“The Directorate and our Aurora units have orders for us. I expect you to listen carefully to them.” Cobra snarled.  
  
“Failure to comply will be punished.” Mamba hissed, snaking towards Mercy and snorting.  
  
“And we expect the smart aleck comments to be kept to a minimum. Unless you wish to out yourselves as in need of disciplinary action.” Adder said in a low, serpentine voice filled with a venomed sweetness as if they dared the others to test their collective patience.  
  
“Am I understood? Or must we demonstrate why we are in command, and not any of you?” Cobra growled, raising their head as high as possible as they perched atop their preferred podium.  
  
A sea of affirmative replies were all that Viper’s three heads needed to simmer down and cease the noises they made.  
  
“Excellent.” They said in unison.  
  
The image of a number of Aurora units; great armoured hybrid computers that combined advanced molecular computing in the form of enormous artificial brains and highly sophisticated quantum computational technologies who “saw” the world from a vertically arrayed trifecta of optics while kept suspended in special fluids and connected to the bottom of their tanks through cyber-brainstems the size of tree trunks; cut into holographic displays of the briefing room’s imagers. New additions to the Federation’s toolkit, they were its secret weapon in organization.  
  
Accompanying them were a number of more shadowy figures, overseers and commanders among the Federal Central Intelligence Network and the RAID. All kept in silhouette. The antennaed form of Director Vzorag was perhaps the only one most would recognise due to being a public official. The director’s insectile four bore four arms and four radially arrayed legs, and their blueish and white carapace was mostly covered by the suit of their office, a formal politician’s attire.  
  
“We are glad to see that you have convened on such short notice, Dead Hand One. For we have a matter of substantial importance for you to handle with your unique skills.” The Director said.  
  
“The Ensryn Volunteer Army has uncovered a large trove of Alimbic technologies on the planet of Cylosis; including living Alimbic inhabitants. They are to be dealt with as quickly and quietly as possible before they can spread this technology to the rest of the paramilitary force, or worse; to the Omyn Democratic Council Republics and its Intergalactica.” Aurora Unit 13 said. One of the older Aurora units, his deep voice echoed upon itself with the voice of a legion.  
  
The world of Cylosis was then displayed by the holographic systems in its orbit around the star of Cynar in the Pinwheel galaxy. The usual details were given out. It was a relatively cold planet due to its distance from its star, and had a particularly strong magnetosphere and thick ozone layer that filtered out the majority of solar radiation. Substantial tectonic activity due to its small, fractured plates created a large number of mountains and islands across its continents and seas and provided enough CO2 to keep it decently comfortable despite its distance from Cynar. A population readout of about 45 million people was given, spread widely across the planet for the most part with some fortress town concentrations.  
  
“I thought we were leaving the EVA to needle the Pirates and the Krikens in that sector?” Dagger said with some concern. Dealing with the monsters that go bump in the night was one thing but she was...hesitant about expanding that to people she considered mostly alright as heard in the slight tremor in her voice.  
  
“The EVA is not an innocent party nor is our understanding with the Intergalactica supposed to be an inviolable pact. We tolerate them for the presence of greater enemies, but we cannot allow them to expand into a greater threat themselves.” Delta Majestic-6 said, the shadowy figure’s feminine figure moving slightly as she spoke, though there was a deep chill in her voice.  
  
“ From our agents on Cylosis, it appears the discoverer happens to be Colonel Gyda Skjǫldr and her husband, Erik Skjǫldr. The clan champion of the Grendakals is noted to be a highly skilled and well equipped combatant. Do not assume she or her husband will go down lightly.” Aurora 399 said, the genderless voice of the supercomputer having a somewhat higher pitch than the prior aurora.  
  
“Do we have to eliminate them?” Cyrus asked, stroking his moustache with his right index finger and thumb while he thought. His brows furrowed and he looked at the holographic images of Gyda and her unit. He didn’t know them yet, but he didn’t really see much of that violent edge in many he was sent to eliminate. She just seemed like a mother who was well equipped to protect her family.  
  
“Capture is unlikely, but if possible you are permitted to attempt it. Doing so may make getting access to their personal data somewhat easier. Additionally, their son; Arne has had some contact with the Alimbics. Ensure that he relinquishes his information.” Gamma Nova-3 said, their silhouette seemingly more mechanical based on the shape of the protrusions that emerged.  
  
“I don't suppose we'll be drawing straws to see who gets to be the one to kill a three year old in cold blood?" Quietus said.  
  
“Soft. Fortunately I have already elected to take responsibility for this task. The family will reveal its secrets; whether as corpses or captives.” Cobra said, giving Quietus a somewhat disdainful look as if they had admitted to cowardice and thus flaw and _weakness_.  
  
“What are the defenses of note?” Veil asked, callibrating his cannon as he raised the question before tilting his head upwards at his superiors.  
  
“You will find the more complete analysis uploaded to your armour computers. But the system has a number of picket screens and orbital defense platforms. The planet itself has theatre shielding and a number of deeply dug in and shielded fortress towns. As the EVA is in the process of evacuating the planet however, non-combat infrastructure is being uprooted and system traffic will be increasing as the populace is evacuated.” Aurora Unit 13 said, displaying a readout of the planet’s rather formidable defenses for a world so sparsely populated.  
  
“And what are we going to do with an Alimbic warship? We don’t have the punch to handle something like that and its a pain to sneak past telepaths.” Mercy said, folding her arms.  
  
“We will deploy precursor countermeasures should the warship’s denizens be hostile. However our Alimbicologists have concluded that their intervention is unlikely. We are more interested in the means to track the ship and to prevent those means from falling into the wrong hands. If they do intervene however, you are expected to defend yourselves. There can be no half measures with an attack such as this.” The Director said.  
  
“Cowardice is unacceptable. Trust in the commands of your superiors. Perform your duties above and beyond expectations. Your orders are commandments. Honour them, and you will succeed.” Cobra said, the middle head of Viper looking from one end of the room to another.  
  
“Don’t hesitate. Analyse, decide, and act. I will be watching your efforts. Fail and perish.” Mamba snarled, cold air bursting from their mouth as they made their demands of their unit.  
  
“And the one who distinguishes themselves above all others...well...they get a reward...do you want it? Good...because I guarantee you that you will like it.” Adder hissed, the left head’s forked tongue flicking out of their mouth to taste the air.  
  
“This will be dirty work, but we have every confidence in your abilities Dead Hand 1. Remember, we are the thin grey line against chaos. As always, We fight in the dark.” Vzorag said.  
  
“So that others may live in the light.” The others completed.  
  
“Outstanding. I want all of you to prepare to board the Dreadnought Nifelheim. We leave immediately.” Cobra commanded, getting salutes out of the other members of the elite team.

* * *

**Sylux's logbook**

Individuals: Special Forces: Galactic Federation: FCIN: RAID: Unknown Void Hydra: Tri-Gender: Dead Hand Alpha: Viper

  
Viper is in actuality three beings conjoined into a single body. The central head, Cobra is the most dominant and imperious. The right head, Mamba is female and a violent enforcer. The left head, Adder, is male and manipulative and inquisitive. Where Viper is from or if they are indeed a natural entity instead of some deliberate mutation or even a fully artificial life form is uncertain, and the designation of "Void Hydra" is one born entirely of convenience based on their appearance. From all psychological evaluations, Viper is at once a totalitarian disciplinarian and also happy to please their superior officers. Perhaps as a result of a lifetime of forcing their three heads into a single line of action, but their shared lack of mercy is a binding element.  
  


**Arne's Notes**

  
"Triple Threat" , "The Three Wintery Deaths", and the "Thrice-King of War" or whatever other title they like to go by haunts my thoughts like a demon. The cackling bell like roars from their three throats have kept me from sleeping for weeks at a time, I'm lucky that I don't need it I guess... But I need to do something about them. Or else the hydra of the dead hand is never going to let me know peace.  
  


Individuals: Special Forces: Galactic Federation: FCIN: RAID: Seskrak: Male: Dead Hand Alpha: Veil

  
Veil is sometimes mischaracterised as simply a sniper and a demolitions expert. But he is also one of the top trainers within the dead hand, moulding new recruits from the R.A.I.D and its recruitment programs into universe class operators who serve the federation as the deadliest of the deadliest. Addittionally, Veil is an expert operator and lead designer of the prototypical "Shadow Falcon" mech series that serves as the bleeding edge of the R.A.I.D's mech R&D program. Hard to please and coldly stoic, Veil is infamous for starving recruits of emotional affection until they cling to even a bare hint of his approval.  
  
  


**Arne's Notes**

Veil is small and physically unassuming and all that means is that he's got a size complex on top of everything else. He feels powerful from exerting control, and everything he looks at he looks at like a predator. He doesn't see people, he sees targets to pick apart, analyse, kill and dissect. But I don't think he'd hold up very well if he was ever brought face to face with someone keen on punching him in the face.  
  


Individuals: Special Forces: Galactic Federation: FCIN: RAID: Human: Female: Dead Hand Alpha: Dagger

  
Ishimoto Keiko, AKA Dagger was originally one of the highest preforming Freelancers in the Triangulum galaxy from a young age; operating in tandem with her brother Ishimoto Amiyana. The two made use of abilities gained through spelunking in Ylla ruins that exposed them to unusual energies that gave them a number of abnormal abilities; particularly involving teleportation, cloaking and spacewarping. Keiko was later handpicked for Dead Hand Alpha by Adder through threats to the lives of her parents and offers of amnesty for high profile thefts. Bitter and sardonic, Dagger's loyalty is in constant doubt.  
  


**Arne's Notes**

  
If Keiko really regretted her life in the dead hand then why doesn't she just take the risk and leave? She can hide anywhere in the universe and a whole army would be at its wit's end trying to find her or whomever she wanted to keep out of the public eye. Yet she stays with five...seven of the universe's worst murderers. Why?  
  


Individuals: Special Forces: Galactic Federation: FCIN: RAID: Synth: Agender: Dead Hand Alpha: Quietus

Quietus was manufactured by R.A.I.D affiliated black site R&D facilities to make use of N'Kren technologies that the unit had managed to crack some of the secrets of to produce a prototype and extremely dangerous assassin synthoid. Taking their duties in grimly humorous good spirits, Quietus is a prolific murderer despite their apparent joviality and detests missions that require low casualties. They are devoted to the cause and often fake doubts to suss out potential defectors and flakes within the R.A.I.D, and always have a direct line to Viper to deal with would be traitors.  
  


**Arne's Notes**

  
Quietus likes to put happy faces on that display screen face of theirs and it's the single most off putting thing imaginable. If they were just a sadist I could maybe understand, but I'm not sure what they get out of it beyond the programming they were created with. Best to scrap the thing and figure out the programming faults later.

  
Individuals: Special Forces: Galactic Federation: FCIN: RAID: Unknown: Female: Dead Hand Alpha: Mercy

  
Mercy's original species is a mystery but her varied skills as a psion and a shapeshifter make her a person of extreme value to the Dead Hand, more than enough to forgive her of her indiscretions. A skilled infiltrator and an extractor of information par excellence, Mercy is infamous for her ability to slip in unnotice and leave nothing but corpses and ruin and all data mysteriously gone. She is regarded as a woman of a million masks and her genuine personality is hard to decipher, but she seems to be easily frustrated by those who refuse to reciprocate her games.  
  


**Arne's Notes**

  
Mercy's hard to get a read on. What's motivating her? What's in this for her? How can she smile after everything she's done? I don't get it. I don't know why I need to know so bad, but I can't rest when these questions rattle around my skull. I'll get my answers, I need them.  
  
  


Individuals: Special Forces: Galactic Federation: FCIN: RAID: Human: Male: Dead Hand Alpha: Cyrux

  
Cyrus Jones, also known as Cyrux due to a comical mishap with his name was accidentally infused with highly charged nanites during Freelancer operations in tandem with the R.A.I.D. This resulted in significantly enhanced abilities and an ability to maximise the capabilities of technologies he interfaced with so as to push his combat armours to heightened extremes and even make use of technologies he shouldn't be able to. Needless to say, this and his boisterous, battle loving nature brought Cyrus to the attentions of the Dead Hand program and into the direct employ of Viper as one of the original members of Dead Hand Alpha. Though Cyrus still maintains some of his chivalry from his past, he has become increasingly accepting of the nature of his work.  
  


**Arne's Notes**

  
Cyrus is probably one of the only members of Dead Hand Alpha who even tries at the act that he's done something worthwhile in his time in the unit. But his hands are as bloody as everyone else's in that whole outfit. If he really wanted to uphold chivalry, if he was really honorable, he wouldn't hide with them.


	7. Worldfall (SA)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> K-2L burns

_Orbit of K-2L, Sekhmet-319 System, Macha Nebula, Whirlpool Galaxy_

The enormous shape of the _Scourge of Heaven_ dropped out of N-Space like a moon moving into an eclipse position. Not a perfect one due to its flying wing shape, but the light of Sekhmet-319 dimmed all the same. The menacing shadow of the ship almost seemed to stretch across the world, a malevolent cloak wrapped around a continent. Black enveloped the surface of what was supposed to be day, turning the warmth of the sun into a cold night as it loomed overhead like the wings of some horrific bat.  
  
And like a hive queen, it was swarming with other ships of various sizes that hung near it like a retinue. Everything from the smallest torpedo boat to battleships and dreadnoughts hovered near this staggering expression of Space Pirate Might. Each of which brought about their own darkness onto the world below, an army far larger than the meagre populace of the planet below waiting within their hulls for an easy victim and a quick, violent but glorious victory to add to their dire legend.  
  
And within, its denizens were making their preparations for a short, sharp conflict. A routine massacre. Something done so often that they were simply running through the motions without concern. This would all be over soon enough. Too soon perhaps. There wouldn't be much fun to be had this time around. But this was a stop on the way to bigger and better things.  
  
At the Bridge was the Space Pirate Enforcer himself, claws clutched to his roost while his predatory pupilless eyes stared below with a terrible malice. Lower personnel who were literally beneath him monitored every scrap of data that the ship was gathering, checking over their monitors in the pits to get organic eyes on any information the computers gathered. He didn't really care for the fineries of command, it was so terribly dull to him. He wanted the rush of primal violence and vicious murder. Command was the fine art of moving so many dots and icons on a screen or a holomap.  
  
His crew awaited battle in a slightly lower level than the Cunning God of Death himself perched on, regarding the target with no small amount of disdain. The gloomily lit purple, green, and yellow interior of the ship framed them all in menacing shadow, and none were cast in a more frightful manner than Ridley himself. His every scornful look magnified by the lighting.  
  
“What a miserable pile of rocks.” Ridley sneered.  
  
He hadn't imagined very much but what he saw somehow managed to impress him even less than what he imagined. He doubted he'd even think about this planet very much when he was done. Just another box to tick before he could sink his talons into a real prize. He wondered for a moment, what these insects did to warrant more than a few moments of his time. He came to the decision that them wasting his time was enough to warrant everything he was going to do to them in less than a second and snorted.  
  
“Analysis: Orbital Bombardment would be ill advised due to aflorite concentrations in planetary crust and mantle.” AAE-13 said, their monotone flat and devoid of even the vaguest of inflections.  
  
The machine was perhaps the most "excited" for this job in as much as anyone could ever call AAE-13 excited about anything. They saw the Afloraltite to be gained as advantageous to their plans. They hoped to advance their career of course, as was only natural. Many came to the Inferno Pack with dreams of using Ridley's lack of interest in the fineries of generalship as a chance to move ahead in the brutal cut-throat hierarchy of the Confederacy.  
  
“Yeah I don’t need to be a supercomputer to figure that out. Shut up.” Ridley grunted with annoyance.  
  
He raised his head in clear menace hissed through his teeth to let them know that he was in no mood for their antics.  
  
“Feh, with an ocean dwelling population this small I’ll be counting fish in the sea before you idiots are even half way through.” Ivax snapped her jaws in visible frustration. Ridley felt nothing for her annoyance but simply snorted steam through his nostrils as he began to stretch his wings.  
  
Ivax bared her teeth, the sea monster was disappointed. She was envious, both of Ridley for so easily finding chances to have his fun, and for the land bound pirates who would be blessed with target rich environments while she was to be stuck with killing off subnautical miners and ocean dweller habitations. She'd be lucky if there were even a million people for her soldiers to unleash themselves upon. She hissed and yapped and dreamed of ocean worlds and habitats that she could cut loose against and bowed her head down. Ridley eyed her annoyance and let out a hacking cough of amusement to Ivax's even further displeasure.  
  
“Anything I need to note before I give the order?” Ridley asked.  
  
“No, they are all but helpless.” Zenkin said.  
  
Zenkin was disappointed to be sure by the quality of the target, but they would find their chances to avail themselves against more worthy targets later.  
  
“Then what are we waiting for? Let’s have a little fun.” Ridley snarled gleefully.  
  
“Now you’re speaking my language.” Corvus giggled as she licked her tongue across her teeth, slavering for the taste of blood and carnage to delight her mouth once again.  
  
“The soldiers are ready to execute the invasion, Enforcer. Shall we get started? I’d like to get back to campaigns that actually advance my career.” Weavel said, folding his hands behind his back as he stared at the world below him. The usual assortment of continents and seas and clouds wafting across the surface. He’d put an end to thousands like it.  
  
“Kill to your heart’s content but make sure to leave some for the market. We’ll be in and out before you know it so don’t hold anything back.” Ridley roared as he stood up on his hind legs and spread his bat like wings to their fullest extent.

 _Sidhemor, K-2_ L

“No way...no way in hell.” Thergax, a six limbed insectoid buzzed as he looked at the menacing profile of the enormous craft hover over the world. Everyone beneath the Shadow of the Scourge was shaking with fearful recognition. Children cried and the grown shook in fear while terrified whispering went through the crowds.  
  
The lights on its bottom provided an odd effect to its eclipse position, but what was unmistakeable after a cursory glance with some magnifiers is that the ship bore the mark of the dread enforcer Ridley. The galaxy on fire.. The emblem of the Inferno Pack, the worst of an already very bad lot.  
  
“..P-pirates? Here?! But this sector’s supposed to be quiet...we don’t have the weapons to...” Elendrina stammered before gulping in fright as she saw the colossal shape of the enemy ship and its escorts loom overhead.  
  
“Get everyone to whatever safety we can find. Hopefully we’ll be able to buy enough time for reinforcements to arrive.” Rodney said, closing his eyes and taking a look in the direction of the armoury.  
  
“Do you think we’ve got a chance?” Thegak chattered as the warship above began to pulse and flash with strange lights, almost certainly decoupling parasitic craft from it to begin the invasion.  
  
“If we fight, some of us might live. If we don’t; we’re all going to die in the slave pens or dissection tables.” Rodney said bitterly. The weak smile he offered was enough evidence though, that even he knew that survival was a long shot at best.  
  
“Besides...I have a plan.” He said, looking to the aflorite and then at Ridley’s massive starship in orbit. This might just work out, he thought to himself. He just hoped the odds weren’t going to be as long as he feared, and reassured himself with knowledge that he was being depended on.

_Neorai forests_

Samus was a giggily mess as she pet at a very nosy Pyonchi who was quite adamant on her sharing the food she had in her hands. Grainy black and leavened bread toasted to perfection cut from a loaf, ovoid in shape containing a hearty meal of cultured meat cut into thin strips like old Iberian pork with an acorn fed, salt cured, and hony glazed taste and a smooth, marbled texture. Paired with it were carefully proportioned portions of leafy vegetables which had a pleasant, slightly tangy taste paired with rich camenbert like soft cheese and a smoky brown sauce that gave the sandwich a bit of a kick, with some tangier circular slices of vegetables thrown in to ensure she had everything she needed in a single meal; with some chocolate and carbonated juice to fill out her needs and wants. Virginia knew she liked to share her food and rarely sat still for long too, and so prepared more than she'd actually eat.  
  
“Wait! I’ll share! I’ll share!” She said as she broke a piece off and let them have some of her sandwich. She smiled warmly at the Rabil as they nibbled at the offered food, wagging their tail to express contentment.  
  
“I can’t wait to show you to everyone!” She said before she noticed something unusual. It was getting darker much faster than should be possible. It should still be late afternoon...it wasn’t bedtime was it? She didn't want to go to sleep just yet. Not when there was still so much fun to be had. Ho-hum, why did she need to take four hours out of every day to sleep? It was absolutely criminal that she had to sacrifice so much of her day to nature's call to a soft place to lie down.  
  
She looked back to see a number of streaking shapes flying over the landscape and squinted her eyes at them. They looked like...planes of some sort? Moving far too fast for people trying to land.  
  
Maybe they just really wanted to get down and meet everyone? But...they looked like Pirate ships, and she remembered something about the Space Pirates being bad people. But they seemed like monsters under the bed. Not something she’d actually meet...  
  
Only momentary distraction by winged animals flying away in terror and her turning to look at them saved her eyes from the blinding flash of the first explosions. She shrieked in fear as the detonations ripped through many hardened bunkers. Nightfall became blinding morning in a second and heat could be felt on her back before the gust of wind threw her and Pyonchi to the ground.  
  
Trees buckled and were stripped of their leaves and had branches snapped off like twigs, and the thunderous roar of the initial bombardment drowned out all other noise. She clapped her ears to her head and screamed in fright. But the sounds of aircraft overhead and the keening wail of their engines like screaming children made her unable to hear even that.  
  
The sonic boom accompanying the engine wail shattered the canopies of many remaining trees, while the meson bombs they threw into the ground sent geysers of partly molten and charred dirt and bedrock into the air that climbed for hundreds of meters. She had to run.  
  
She looked back to the Landing Plaza many kilometers away and stumbled her way towards it, seeing a great purple shape descend towards the ground.

_Fionna Landing Plaza, K-2L_

“This isn’t a party you get to leave. So let me take you away from the door.” Ridley snarled as he grabbed at a shuttle and shoved the craft, as large as sixty old earth aircraft carriers arranged into a rough rectangle that was trying its best to lift off with its thousands of passengers downwards with a press after slamming into it. Its engines sought to lift off into the heavens, screaming as they were met with unexpected resistance while his wings beat with the thunderclap of a shrieking sound barrier and the trails of igniting air. It was a magnificent contest, but he won out and reoriented the vehicle towards the earth and shoved it down like a meteor.  
  
The kilometre and a half-sized craft then slammed into the ground hard enough to rupture its hull, an explosion erupting from it that could be seen from kilometers away as his plasma breath seared its way through forty-meter thick starship armour and into its afloraltite stores to shower the denizens of K-2L with shrapnel. The catalysts for the ship’s zero-point energy systems erupted in a chain reaction that quickly formed a titanic mushroom cloud while he rose from the blast.  
  
He spread his wings and roared over the deafening blast, the heat of the detonation that incinerated unarmoured people until nothing was left but black stains where their shadows once were seemingly failing to affect him, while whatever tears he received in his wings from railgun like shards of superheated metal healed over almost immediately. He felt like a god, with the lives and deaths of so many at the tips of his claws.  
  
Volleys of fireballs erupted from his mouth, seeking gouts of plasma so hot that most atoms simply disintegrated into quarks flowing like raindrops and engulfing just about everything he could see. Trees not smashed by the explosion before caught aflame if they were not simply incinerated, flesh disintegrated as molecular bonds tore apart and electrons flowed from their atoms like litchi skins. When he ceased his barrage of fireballs, he eyed the area for any other targets. A bunker caught his eye, fortified in a manner to resist heavy bombardment.  
  
Anti-aircraft weapons simply glanced off of his bioshielding. Quad-barelled mass drivers, surface to air missile launchers, and cutting anti-projectile lasers all had their own goes at him only to meet him simply spreading out his arms and laughing as he shrugged off the strikes that fell upon his body. Missiles far faster than their own sound, speedy enough to be invisible even to the augmented eyes of the present era raced towards him as he easily dodged his way through the thicket of lasers once he had stressed his durability advantage enough. He simply snatched one out of the air as if it were moving in slow motion and flung it back to its sender, scattering Federal Militia troops whose mass drivers barked to life with a volley of relativistic projectiles.  
  
"Boring" he snarled as he let out a scream so powerful that the exhalation of air was enough to bowl over the soldiers and chew away at their shielding while already shielding and armour stripped soldiers simply exploded into gore. He threaded the needle of hypervelocity rounds going fast enough to launch themselves clean out of the solar system given a few years and stabbed his tail into a shield meant to resist heavy-duty bombardment until he felt it break; cackling like a demon as the bunker's chief defence sputtered and gave way before his power.  
  
He grinned and flew over his now vulnerable target and then dove down like a comet. He righted himself and let his taloned feet slam into the earth. The ground shook and cracked at his feet before giving way, bedrock splintering and adamantocrete tunnels collapsing from his raw strength. Tunnel collapses and cave-ins would surely have killed the residents already, but he was not yet satisfied.  
  
He let out another one of his terrible roars while purple and red flame began to build in his beaked mouth. He inhaled and cast his head forth; letting loose a gout of flame and didn’t stop until it had pierced all the way through. Sweeping the beam around, he cut off the flow of energy and looked at the molten ruin he had wrought, smelling the vaporised rock and metal with a grin. They may not have been a problem for his soldiers but in his own words, he was an army all his own.  
  
“Can’t have you sitting out the fun hiding in the corner, can we?” He said, chuckling to himself as he sifted through the rubble, looking for any remains. Sure enough, he found one body, charred beyond recognition but still not fully carbonized or evaporated. Licking his teeth, he bit into the flesh and ripped out a mouth full. His teeth crushed the bones without effort, and his throat pushed down the morsel immediately.  
  
“Hrm, not bad. A bit overdone, but it can’t be helped.” He chuckled as he finished his grisly meal, his tongue lapping any of the burnt organs that fell out of the openings he made in the carcass before they could touch the ground as he took flight once more. He looked down at the ocean of flame that he had created, forests burning as far as his keen eyes could see in every spectrum. He shook with an obscene, unclean joy at the sight, wishing he could hear the screams of the people as he shot across the sky at hypersonic speeds.  
  
He slammed into the area around the Gaela landing plaza and smashed into a row of smaller individual spacecraft he recognised as having faster than light capabilities. Dirt, flesh, and metal erupted in all directions while his impact tore down some of the walls of the port structures around him. He let out a vicious roar of gleeful malice, letting it be heard far and wide to let everyone know that he had sounded the hunting call.  
  
“Come on, we’ve got fresh meat here!” Ridley roared. Turning around on his two feet, he saw a number of children huddled for safety with their teachers and turned around with a malevolent gleam in his yellow eyes.  
  
“Oh aren’t you all just the sweetest things. Here, let me make it all better. Let’s start with you kiddies, because I want to play something very fun.” He said, folding his wings behind him as he walked in a bipedal manner towards them, licking his teeth and sniffing towards them as he clawed through the obstruction between him and his targets.  
  
“Oh don’t worry, I’m not going to kill you...immediately. We’re going to have ourselves a good time first.” He cackled as he reached for his first target. He was only briefly distracted by the sight of a pirate transport craft ascending towards his flagship before he turned back to his victims and bared his teeth in an evil grin.

_Gaela landing Plaza_

Everything was on fire. The heat was so intense she began to feel weak. Smoke hung heavy in the air, blotting out the sun and casting everything into hellish darkness lit only by what was on the ground. But through the sound of an inferno consuming whatever fuel made itself available, she could hear the drumrolls of continual explosions. She could hear shouts and roars in so many languages, she heard things breaking, she heard things moving. But most of all, she heard screaming.  
  
So much screaming. All blending together into a din that burnt its way into her ears. The constant wailing of the damned and the dying, so many cries for help and people begging for something, anything to save them. But she could do nothing. She tried her best, tried to throw medical salve or tap on the medical teleportation beacons of the fallen like she was taught onto her friends, the blank eyes of Jacen not flinching as she quailed and tried to fit his head back on. Her hands were red and her feet almost slipped on the gore of the young boy. She cried so much, but he lay there still, only one eye staring back at her from a half missing face.  
  
He had tried to ask the big marshal in command of the space pirate soldiers where his parents were. The one she would come to know as Weavel split him in half with a casual twist of his arms and threw him through a building before collapsing it atop him. So...so much blood. The sound he made as he stopped moving was a scream unlike anything she'd ever heard before, a sound she didn't even know people could make. But she had to save him, she was his friend...she had to save him.  
  
She had shoved the boulder-sized debris that had covered him off; a gift from her standard pattern augmentations, but he still would not rise. What was she doing wrong? Was she doing a bad job? This was supposed to work. But she felt a hand tugging at her. A crying, begging voice desperate to be anywhere but here.  
  
Aisha begged, pleaded for her to go. She was so scared. Aisha was usually so brave, so sure of what to do. Now she was crying for her mommy before she threw her hands over her mouth and sobbed as a six-eyed Urtraghian jumped down onto the ground, its form almost seeming to have teleported there with the distinct thunderclap of faster than sound movement due to the power of its augmentations that let it move faster even than her eyes could follow. The Urtraghian growled something she could not understand, its power armour shifting silently with its movements as it sniffed the air before mass driver rounds began pinging off of its shields with metallic cracks.  
  
The Urtraghian kicked over the nearest auto-transport with a solid snap of its legs towards the source of the weapons fire, getting Samus to duck down as Aisha screamed. The building before them, not rated to withstand impacts of this magnitude; had its first floor balcony caved in by the speeding car before the Trooper spat out a burst of projectiles that tore out man sized chunks of civilian grade fortecrete with dreadful pulsing sounds. The awful green glow of the weapons searing their way into Samus' retinas as she quivered.  
  
Aisha tried to move, Samus' eyes shot open once again as she reached out to try and stop her before the Pirate began to turn around to notice her. A croaking, deep roar was made as the Space Pirate saw fresh prey, fresh meat. Other people who had been hiding in their direction began to bolt, and the six-eyed monster made a hunting call before extending an energy scythe and charging like a cannon ball. Grigor Stefanovich; the person who managed her daycare split in sizzling pieces before he had enough time to scream.  
  
Volgan Iral; a nice reptilian boy who made a lemonade she liked to drink often; exploded into ash and bone chips from a single shot that powered on through half a dozen people she didn't know the names of before crashing into the ground with a shower of shards.  
  
A grenade went out, dozens more died, only her decision to close her eyes saving her sight as Elrani Theyri; the girl who had taught her how to play with a skip rope was lifted to the level of one of the nearly four meter tall space pirates and simply had her head bitten off by the reptilian while others turned towards the spray of blood and descended on it like sharks. Emaciated militia pirates tore off chunks of flesh in a frenzy before being thrown away with swats from the more muscular regulars.  
  
A grunt of an alien throat brought Samus and Aisha's attentions to the left where they saw the gaunt form of a militia pirate staring down at them, fear jolting into their hearts as the crustaceoid pirate clacked his mandibles in recognition of her orders. It was a hesitant acknowledgement, and she looked around as if to confirm before she exhaled and sought to carry through with her orders.  
  
The Bermudan muttered something Samus could not understand, something mournful sounding. Like a plea for forgiveness before she raised her gun at her and began charging up a blast, green energy collecting in the barrel. But when she cried and screamed, the Pirate's gaze faltered beneath her helmet. It made a soft gurgling sound and lowered its weapon, pointing her towards an avenue of escape and pushing her towards it. The nameless conscript, a dreg of the ladders of hierarchy, could not bring itself to hurt something so vulnerable, and it turned to report the completely wrong direction.  
  
A small act of pity had saved her life, but another pirate militaman who had hesitated in a similar fashion, refusing to strike down whimpering children and arguing with the commanders over it found itself to not be so fortunate. Its shielding took only so many hits to break, and they peeled off its armour with frenzied savagery to get at the carapaced flesh of the militia pirate who screamed in horror as they were pulled apart and devoured. Entrails and viscera spitting out in all directions and the pirate's screams stopped shortly.  
  
Samus vomited almost immediately.  
  
She flinched as something exploded to her left shortly after she dove into the streets, having outrun the blaze devouring the forest only to find even greater horror here. A large quadrepedal mechanical monster bearing the symbology of Ridley’s unit stomping through and raising its many barelled armatures; rippling retorts of weapons fire coming from it as the elephantine body of AAE-13 mercifully ignored her, busy with reducing fortifications to rubble as they were and stepping on tanks like toys, secondary weapons spitting multicoloured death in other directions while Samus and Aisha crawled through the wreckage.  
  
Their mammoth body faded into the smoke, becoming a black silhouette, and then could be seen no more save for the many coloured pulses of their weapons. She was shaken, and her eyes lingered on the silhouette for some time. The deep drones of the machine and its warpack made her spine feel like it was trying to crawl out of her mouth. And her skin was so soaked in sweat she felt like she was underwater. Gelrandi, one of the defense militia captains of K-2L shot a barrage of missiles at AAE-13. They were always so brave, so heroic, so inspiring. Samus even designed an action figure in their honour; her brilliant mind working the fabricators with dextrous brilliance.  
  
The fusile missile exploded in a shaped eruption of solar brilliance, forcing its energy all into one direction in an effort to pierce through AAE-13's shielding. A detonation that would have been considered massive overkill against the defences of the old Cheyenne facility on Earth bloomed and the robot stopped in its tracks as the dust settled.  
  
AAE-13 swivelled its castle sized uppermost body and fired precisely once with its primary armature and Gelrandi and the entire building complex they were on ceased to be in a cascade of evil green light. Samus pulled Aisha further, they had to get out of here, nearly tripping on the dismembered corpse of an infant who had been partly eaten by the battle pets of the pirates whose shrill howls keened in their ears in the distance.  
  
She looked to the right, hearing someone shouting for help, someone pinned by rubble as fire advanced towards them. Another monstrous eel headed and six eyed creature with metal-covered limbs pulled back the bladed helm they wore and grabbed at the rubble, shoving boulder-sized debris aside with ease. The man who had been pinned absent-mindedly saying thanks before the Urtraghian pulled him up and snarled words of contempt in a language she didn’t understand, then bit into his chest.  
  
She shuddered, sickened by the sight of flesh being torn free while the pirate threw the man to starved looking conscripts who gladly ripped into him. She was going to puke once again, she couldn’t keep her lunch down, she was breathing so hard it hurt. She didn’t stick around, she had to get away.  
  
Her small legs, weighed down by carrying Pyonchi buckled as Hunter Corvus raced ahead, her guns firing in either direction to pop off the heads of those who tried to run and then running through a security trooper, energy scythe piercing through her power armour with ease. She took a moment to examine the dying woman and lifted her up, letting gravity cut her in half. She laughed to herself and let her flight back kick into action once more, wheeling through the sky.  
  
Corvus cackled and cut through fleeing aerocraft with deceptive grace but obvious malice. Kwame, a somewhat older boy who often gave Samus sweets tried to call out for her as soon as he laid eyes on her, waving towards her. Samus' eyes caught something falling and she screamed out a plea for him to watch out before he saw an aerohauler plummeting towards him and then crushing him into gory paste, cutting off their initial route of escape and forcing them down into an alleyway and its tunnel systems.  
  
She crawled through a place that seemed to be free of smoke, calling for her parents. Where were they? She thought to herself. She just wanted them to see her, to know she was safe. They would know what to do. They always did, she thought before the looming shape of a pirate destroyer pierced the veil overhead. She went silent, and pushed herself against the wall of the circular crawl space and pushed Pyonchi’s head towards hers. Her heart was beating so quickly. Aisha continued to whimper, begging anyone who was listening to make this all go away.  
  
The Admiral’s raider ship scattered small weapons fire in all directions, shredding through what foes it spotted while the cyborg themselves rode a skiff, observing the carnage through their optics. For a moment she thought they saw her as they fixated on her direction and she felt her heart-stopping however briefly, but they simply fired some manner of green beam at a crowd who sought to make a break for it. A weight lifted from her chest, but the fear had yet to dissipate. A warbling sound was heard as they sweeped the beam from left to right, each victim collapsing into a pile of goo while a tendril flicked forward, seeming to order a bomber flight to make another run there. They were using lower-powered weapons purely for the sake of inflicting terror, relishing in the sight of the dying.  
  
She gasped and crawled faster, pushing herself out of the building towards the miner’s head-quarters. The ground was stitched with federation’s weapons fire, magnet driven bullets sending out large gusts of earth and chipped masonry into the sky and it was all so loud. She yelped in surprise as she jumped back. She spit out a quick apology, not knowing how to make it stop as her limbs felt like they had currents running through them. Aisha spun and rolled to get away from the stitches dug into the ground, her body almost overwhelmed with terror as one of the Pirates behind them fell over from the impact of heavy defensive weapons.  
  
As she tried to run, a cape wearing and heavily built pirate in impressive looking armour riding atop a tank roared orders she didn’t understand; but she recognised him, Weavel. As Weavel pointed at the structure she darted away, one of the pirates accompanying the hovering tanks and mechs looking at the direction of her sound before dismissing it to carry out their orders. Tears were flowing out of her eyes like a water tap now. She didn’t understand, why was this happening?  
  
The headquarters was gone before she knew it, a drumroll burst of heavy munitions having reduced it to nothing before she had a look. Maybe the shoreline, she thought; seeing submersibles trying to dive into the safety of the waters. But this was no refuge, as the emergence of Ivax’s head proved. Shaking the submersible caught in her jaws and crushing it open, she let out a deep, bellowing roar before she flopped back into the water, her jaws opening again and snapping around another submersible to drag it into the depths.  
  
She screamed once again, her cries were more and more desperate as she tearfully begged for someone to save her.  
  
“Mama! Papa! Where are you?” She pleaded before flinching as something crashed near her and almost fell over as people crawled out, most on fire and all dead in moments as a pack of pirates crawled over the crashed vessel and finished off anything left standing. She stumbled and picked herself up, ignoring the scrape to her knee as she repeated her call. She wanted to be with them, nothing else mattered.  
  
But then she saw the monster, a great purple thing who had just left some with dead looks in their eyes and somewhat less mangled flesh than usual. Ridley seemed satisfied, obscenely so and he appeared to be twisting his claws around in a small person, seeing different screams they could make.  
  
“What’s your lowest octave hrm? I want to see what role you’d play in a choir. Your pet certainly wasn’t much for singing.” He said with an ugly, horrible laugh as they screamed with white hot agony.  
  
“Oh come on now, you don’t want to make too much noise in front of daddy would you?” He said, moving a corpse impaled through the barbed point on his tail in front of their faces and using his free hand to move their jaw up and down like a puppet.  
  
“You gotta be strong Makel, you gotta fight through the pain. Don’t be a wuss like your cat” He said, mimicking the voice perfectly.  
  
“P-pleaaaaaaauuugggghhhh” Makel said before Ridley shoved their face into a fire and kept it there. He whistled a pleasant tune and tapped his foot to a beat while he waited before pulling the still screaming person back and taking a bite, severing their left leg. With a grin, he then chomped on the rest, mercifully ending the screaming.  
  
She yelped and fell on her butt, whimpering and quivering as Ridley perked up and looked around before fixating on her and Aisha and giving a devilish smile.

“Oh isn’t this your lucky day little girl? To meet me, the great Ridley; the Cunning god of Death, the Wind of Slaughter, the Holocaust bringer, and the Ashmaker, in a good mood too. You even brought a friend. I love the little furry animals you little monkeys collect.” He said, licking his teeth and jutting his head forward.  
  
“I...I’m Samus Aran...three years old...w...why are you here?” She stammered, shaking so badly she couldn’t even stand on her own. His eyes seemed to almost light up, ah there’s a name he’s heard of...vaguely.  
  
“Because your parents are very good at their jobs, but they need to pay their dues. I’m like the tax collector, I make sure everyone pays.” He said, looking at the many colours of blood on his claws and licking them.  
  
“C-c-can we be friends? Please...i-if you m-make them stop...e-even though we’re di...different...we can be friends…” She said, shaking but smiling as she tugged at one of the fingers of his wings. He paused briefly. She touched him. She laid her hand on him, without malice, without threat. She tugged at him, seeking friendship and peace. She looked at him in the eyes, full of friendly love and empathy. She was scared, but she wanted to be his friend. He gave her an almost pitying face.  
  
But inside, anger boiled like a supernova waiting to go off in a star's last moments.  
  
She touched him. She got her filthy monkey paws on his carapace and scales. She approached him without paying the proper respect. She thought she could approach him of all people with her disgusting crowd loving social habits and drag a mighty solitary predator such as him into such things. He could hear the soldiers thinking he’d gone soft. He could see her and that stupid squirrel coming to him again and again with that stupid, awful smile.  
  
“Oh that’s not going to happen.” He sneered with a cold voice, his grin fading away entirely.  
  
“W...why?” She quivered, disappointed.  
  
“Heheheheheheh.” He laughed, maniacally and without a hint of mirth as she nervously laughed herself, he seemed to double over, increasing the volume of his laughter to something far more unpleasant. Ear-splitting, like rapid-fire engine backfires as he forced himself to keep laughing. His eyes began to literally burn with anger as his laugh devolved into a hateful roar.  
  
“BECAUSE YOU’RE A LITTLE HOLLERING APE WHO NEEDS TO SHUT UP!!!!!” He roared as he looked first to Aisha as the toddler tried to run away and spat out a supernova hot gout of flame from his maw and utterly vaporised her, her life ending with such startling swiftness she didn't even have enough time to scream as vaporising rock rose up, blow away by Ridley's wings while he turned towards Samus with a sneer of pure hatred.  
  
"Oh don't worry, I'm not going to let that kill you." He said as he stomped towards her, flicking his tail through the necks of other bound captives he had lined up for his amusement, blood sputtering from sliced open necks to douse the ground in a rainbow of viscera. Every step the dragon made towards her made the earth rumble as he loomed almost impossibly large over her. His body rising up to more than twenty meters as he stood fully upright. His hands reached out to the buildings to either side of him and crushed them into debris, sending them scattering all around Samus as Pyonchi made a high pitched squeak and the girl dumbly sputtered in terror.  
  
"W-why are you d-doing this!?" She begged, she wanted...needed to understand him. The malice in his eye, the unbridled hate for someone he barely knew. The awful growl that made her body feel like it was turning to jelly. She couldn't grasp such evil, just as Ridley had no capacity to appreciate her genuine kindness and compassion. A dog barked at him, he stomped on it and twisted his claw while baring his teeth and licking his beak, flicking some of its viscera in her direction to get blood all over her face.  
  
"Because in this universe, there are predators and prey. You, like all you little social cretins, are prey. I am a predator. I hunt, I kill, I terrorise. It's in my blood, just like it's in yours to scream, cry, and wet yourself." He chuckled with dark menace as he loomed ever nearer, his firebreath charging up once again.  
  
"Now, normally I'd make this fun. You're such a sweet little thing after all. I could enjoy breaking you for so many, many years. But I have better things to do, Samus." He said, relishing in the way she quailed when he said her name. Oh, he knew who she was, who were her parents, how much they treasured her. He could see their despair, and it made him almost feel a drug high as he cackled like the devil himself.  
  
"Oh I know all about you. Your parents are such big union people yes? Dad has that furor celtica, mommy's a Jewess; hrm, guess that makes you one too right? Now. I believe your people are familiar with being turned to ash. So goodbye, monkey." He said as his mouth began to glow orange, a radiant heat that made her feel weak to her knees before a few shots of blue pulse rifle ovoids streamed into him. Shots like this could have cored old earth warships, but barely got Ridley to flinch as he swept his heat blast leftwards and fired.  
  
Elendrina boost jetted to the left to let the fire stream off into the distance and threw a grenade at the Dragon who caught it in hand and muffled the detonation in his curled fist while his bioshielding crackled and a menacing growl came from him. A high frequency monomolecular power blade was extended from the foreman's wrist and tried to stab into Ridley, but he simply flicked her aside as Elendrina looked to Samus.  
  
"Run!" She shouted before Ridley grabbed at her and simply chomped down on her to crush her to death instantly, shielding shattering and armour splintering while the dragon gulped down some of the sweet flesh inside.  
  
"Now...does anyone else want to interrupt?"  
  
"Figures, now...where was I...ah yes...Time to disappear." Heat that felt like the raw energies of oppression itself washed over her like a blanket thrown to smother her as he prepared a stream of heat to shred mountains. Grotesque overkill for a three-year-old girl, but he had a point to make.  
  
She screamed louder than ever as she dropped downwards, instinctively preparing for the end until a thunderclap and a sudden warm light overhead got Ridley’s fire to miss by a great distance, shooting into the sky and passing harmlessly upwards, throwing clouds away from its path.  
  
“Augh! My eye!” Ridley screeched as he shook off some of the shrapnel and blinked his eye open again. It was intact, but that detonation was unpleasant. Tankbuster rocket if he wasn’t mistaken.  
  
“Samus, run!” Virginia shouted, having fitted herself with one of the spare exomechs she could find. The mining ferrocrusher exomech let loose with a cutting laser that pushed Ridley back with a sweeping cut before throwing a burning tank at the Dragon, forcing him to catch it as he skidded backwards and tore it in half with a contemptuous twist of his arms.  
  
"You're not much good at timing, already got one of your friends down my throat." Ridley sneered.  
  
“Mama!” She shouted.  
  
“Just go!” She said.  
  
“Get away from my daughter!” She said, having the machine rush Ridley as quickly as possible, slamming its arms into him and throwing him into a shield wall that made him grunt briefly in annoyance.  
  
“Your whole family line is going up in smoke you hear me! You’re all dead!” He roared as he pushed through the industrial saws trying to cut into his flesh, grabbing them with his hands and pushing back with obscene strength.  
  
“Come on out of that can Aran! I’ll break you in every little way a female ape can be broken.” He roared with animalistic rage as he used his wings to push against the Crusher’s arms. The laser fired again, but his bioshielding let him push through before the retrofitted missile launcher fired a volley of tankbusters down his throat, getting him to cough out from the explosion.  
  
He was not injured, however, and he pushed back against her after bracing. He looked at the fleeing Samus and roared in outrage as he tried to fire off one of his seeking fireballs, only to be met with another missile, this time to his cheek.  
  
“Fine, you first.” He growled as his tail lashed out and jammed into the treads to immobilize the machine while he bit down at the cockpit to rapidly deplete the energy shielding. He grabbed at his opponent, trivially overpowering the mech to lift it into the air and slamming it back down into the earth.  
  
Samus wanted her mother to win, she cheered her on mentally, but she knew mom would be mad if she didn’t run. She nodded tearfully and kept going as Ridley overwhelmed the Ferrocrusher’s shields and grabbed at its arms, flapping his wings to go above its saws and landing behind the machine. Another missile barrage interrupted another fireblast, but he sunk his feet claws into the machine and lifted up high before dropping it once again, a gout of fire pushing the machine down after he yanked off the arms.  
  
The crusher slammed into the ground like a meteor, and the impact threw Samus off of her feet as Ridley slammed back into the ground. But still, Virginia crawled out and fired from the wreckage, a power suit having protected her from death. Ridley sneered at the shots, even the grenades and missile bursts she used and bathed her in flame to exhaust her shielding before smashing her into the ground when she tried to fire off the dash jets to get airborne.  
  
“I’m getting very tired of you Aran, but you are a soft, tasty thing.” Ridley sneered as he used a claw to dig into the suit to try and cut it open from helm to navel without hitting her skin too much.  
  
“So I’ll enjoy this.” He grinned.  
  
“B-before or after my husband..blows your ship to hell?” She grunted through the pain as he cut open her face mask to leer at her face and started on her chest plate. That got him to stop, opening his eyes in shock, anger, and disbelief.  
  
“...What!?” He said, pausing as he remembered one of the ships lifting off earlier. He looked up and let out a roar of anger. She laughed bitterly and in a fury he jabbed his thumb claw through her chest, getting a wet squelch and grunt out of her as a horrified Samus looked on.  
  
“No! Mama!” She pleaded, reaching in her direction as Ridley threw himself into the air, the sonic boom of his takeoff throwing Samus off her feet.

_Cargo bay of the Scourge of Heaven_

Another Pirate fell over dead, the reptilian missing most of his head as Rodney’s Rangers made their way deeper into the ship. Or well, just Rodney. Everyone else was dead now, cut down by the swarm of space pirates who called the ship home.  
  
He was injured, but his destination was so close. He looked around and finally saw his prize, the primary aflorite storage holds within the cavernous and dimly lit interiors of this hellship. The ceiling was high, and the glowing crystals were scintillating in the dull light.  
  
Two last pirates jumped down to the ground, one with crab claws, the other a reptilian.  
  
“+Enforcer Ridley, we have Rodney, he’s injured.+” One reported.  
  
“+Then kill him already!+” Ridley roared over the line as he appeared in the hangar, roaring with unbelievable fury as he looked around. His smug look now replaced with blood boiling anger, visible on the monitors Ridley had throughout the ship to display his glory to his lackeys.  
  
The reptilian primed the battle hammer while the armoured pincer wielder charged up their galvanic cannons while Rodney reached for something on the side of his light blue security armour.  
  
“The line ends here, monkey. You can’t escape this ship.” The Crustacean pirate growled.  
  
“You don’t really think I came here with an exit plan do you?” He said as he primed the high-temperature explosive.  
  
“...What are you doing! You’ll get us all killed!” The Reptilian barked in horror.  
  
“You’ll never see your daughter again! Is that what you want!?” Ridley roared over the communication feed as he stormed through the ship, trying to find where his target was.  
  
“She’ll be all alone on that miserable rock and die with wild animals gnawing on her bones! You think you’re saving her!?” Ridley howled.  
  
“From you, yes.” Rodney said, the Pirates firing in a panic at him, throwing him against the wall after he shot one repeatedly in the head, causing them to fall over with a burst shield while he slammed into the wall and weakly pulled himself up.  
  
“For Samus…” He said, Ridley’s eyes widening as he tried instead to run, tearing his way through the hull as Rodney’s hands activated the primed explosive. He threw aside pirates who asked him what he was doing and let them be sucked into the void of space as he clawed his way through a viewport, but too late.  
  
The explosion began small, stabbing lances of light piercing through the hull of the dying ship but quickly bloomed outwards. The aflorite catalysed in a zero point energy burst, and a detonation like a new sun reduced the Scourge of Heaven to free-floating plasma. Ridley beat his wings, but the energy wave engulfed him and shrapnel slammed into him, howling outrage as he burned and fell towards the planet, the fiery raiment of re-entry surrounding him as he would hit the ground like a meteor.

_Gaela Plaza_

The other pirates stopped and looked on in horror as the explosion tore the very heart out of Dragon Fleet in one fell swoop. Only the efforts of the Scourge’s own shields stopped the blast from devastating the planet itself, but fragments from the ship and fleet were already starting to rain down on the surface below. The remaining fleet began to open fire upon the Debris, seeking to prevent landfall by any means, but the mission had been a failure.  
  
“Withdraw with what afloraltite we have gathered. We cannot resist the retaliation fleet in this state.” Grand Marshal Weavel ordered, snapping his fingers to the nearby pirates.  
  
He could hear them, blaming him, wondering whose heads High Command was going to want on a silver platter for this catastrophe. He could forget about advancing his career now really...he needed to think about the more immediate concern of justifying to High Command why he shouldn't be demoted. _Especially_ if Geoform 187 didn't survive. A hideous death would be the most generous thing High Command would give him if the Enforcer was lost.  
  
“But sir…Enforcer Ridley was reported crashing back to the planet.”  
  
Then there was hope at least. Ridley could endure a great deal as long as he was given the opportunity to regenerate. But with the _Scourge of Heaven_ destroyed and most of the Inferno Pack's first fleet reduced to drifting plasma and more exotic particles they wouldn't be able to stick around. The Federation would send in the army or the navy or send out a call for some hotshot freelance space hunters and sweep them up. If Ridley was alive after that, he could afford to wait for a stealth extraction. He wouldn't be happy about it, but right now Weavel couldn't care less about what Ridley wanted.  
  
“I said withdraw! We will dispatch commandos to retrieve the Enforcer or whatever remains he has left. For now...take what is left and head home. Examine what salvage there is to be had of the ship and haul it, scuttle the rest before the vultures steal our science.” He said bitterly.  
  
“Yes Grand Marshal.” The pirate responded.  
  
“Statement: This outcome is...unfortunate. Prediction: High Command will be displeased.” AAE-13 said as they stomped into view.  
  
Understatement of the cycle. With good fortune the Despot wouldn't have Weavel's carapace flayed off his boiled flesh and mounted behind him in his office. Hopefully he would be...understanding of the unforeseen circumstances, especially if the right scapegoats could be fed to High Command to save his career. Hrm...who had died in the blast that wouldn't be alive to contradict the narrative he was already concocting in his head, he wondered?  
  
“You don’t think Ridley is dead, do you? Might be a new spot opening up in the Enforcers.” Corvus said, landing on her feet next to Weavel as he dusted off his pauldrons.  
  
Hah as if anyone here was going to be considered for promotion..  
  
“No, but it’ll be years before High command trusts him with another ship of that size.” Weavel growled. And years before _he_ was entrusted with a command this prestigious he reminded himself. The Inferno Pack's days as the golden childs of High Command were almost certainly over and he could already see the smug looks on Kraid's Jade Carnage or Draygon's Abyssal Demise troops, mocking him for this failure.  
  
“...A pity, I had grown fond of it.” Zenkin said, folding their arms behind themselves.  
  
“Graaaahhh...the large ships have the best water facilities.” Ivax howled as she beached herself and shook her head in displeasure.  
  
Well, at least she made it out alright. Two enforcers WIA would really be an unthinkable black mark on Weavel's career.  
  
“Enough...get your forces and follow orders.” Weavel snarled.  
  
Soon enough, the remaining pirates grabbed what they could and angrily sacked what was left before they returned to their ships and shot off into the heavens. And eventually the flames burnt themselves out as they always did, and all that was left was ash; and a little girl stumbling through it, not sure where to go. All alone on an entire planet.

* * *

** Samus' Logbook **

Warships: Destroyed: Confederacy of Dismor: Inferno Pack: Dragon Fleet: Leviathan Category: Scourge of Heaven

Ridley's longest serving flagship, the Scourge of Heaven was built at considerable cost; financed through a spree of looting and assembled at the primary Shipyards of the rogue Corporation Todmor industries to be a dominating force in space. Able to obliterate planets and cause disruption to stars with ease, the Scourge of Heaven was infamous for being nearly invincible under the command of Strategos Zenkin and Enforcer Ridley; carving a path through space wherever it went. With a massive crew compliment including billions of ground assault troops and a massive arsenal centered around a zero point energy cannon able to blast open a star at full charge, the Scourge of Heaven could single handedly crush resistance across entire sectors, and was always accompanied by Dragon Fleet, an infamous naval formation that had never lost a battle under Zenkin's command and was considered one of the most dangerous naval task forces in the universe. The ship's reign of terror was finally brought to an end by the sacrifice of Rodney Aran; costing the lives of enormous numbers of pirates in one fell swoop.

_Samus' Notes:_

I suppose blowing up space pirate capital ships really does just run in the blood for me.

Planets: Whirlpool Galaxy: Macha Cluster: Human Habitable: Galactic Federation Controlled: Visited: K-2L (Part 2)

K-2L was later attacked by the forces of the space pirate enforcer Ridley and the leading fleet of his Inferno Pack. The destruction rendered most of the planet uninhabited and was presumed to have wiped out all of its colonists until the re-emergence of Samus Aran ten years after the attacks. Debris from the Scourge of Heaven and its accompanying ships has formed into an impressive ring system around the planet, with a permanent Naval base dedicated to ensuring that the debris do not impact the planet and to scavenge the remains for potential salvage. Resettlement efforts have been underway, but the ruins of the previous settlers are left standing out of respect. A museum dedicated to the exploits of Samus Aran serves as the planet's primary attraction despite her finding the concept of such a thing to be flustering.

_Samus' Notes_

I just don't enjoy the sort of hagiography that museums dedicated to single people usually participate in. I also think it glosses over the other ten million people who lived there. And for one thing, I'd appreciate it if they stopped trying to find excuses to put "Greco-Roman artistic nudes" of myself up. Most of them aren't even accurate. I've never had red or green hair as far as I know.

Individuals: Deceased: Human: Federation: Civilian: IWA: Miners: Rodney Aran

A mining foremen, former army scout, and geologist, Rodney Aran came to work with the Sirian Mining Collective after graduating from the Domai Academy of the Physical Sciences. Marrying Virginia Aran shortly after graduating, the two would be sent to settle K-2L to extract its rich Afloraltite deposits before the Fuel Gel boom inevitably crashed the value of Afloraltite. The two would have a child named Samus Aran, and had plans to conceive a pair of twins named Saren and Sean. Rodney would die shortly after Samus' third birthday in a final raid on Ridley's flagship, detonating the stolen Afloraltite and much of Ridley's fleet in the process. He was posthumously award the Quasar circlet; the highest non-military honour the Federation can offer.

_Samus' Notes:_

I'm not a miner myself, but I'll always be a miner's daughter. I like to think he's proud of me, I'm certainly proud of him.

Individuals: Deceased: Human: Federation: Civilian: IWA: Miners: Virginia Aran

A geologist and a former marine mech operator, Virginia was hired by the Sirian Mining Collective following the publishing of her thesis on Afloraltite detection. Originally having known Rodney from their grade school days, she married him after graduating and would join him on K-2L. She would become the mother of the more well known Samus Aran and was planning to raise two more children with vague plans for a fourth. Noted as a devoted parent and wife, she was also a fierce proponent of worker organization, and was the one to introduce her husband to the IWA. She would meet her end shortly after her daughter's third birthday, utilising a mining mech to delay Ridley as long as possible to prevent him from realising that his ship was being set up for sabotage. Though outmatched, she held him off long enough for their plan to be realised and died from fatal lacerations. Her remains were interned in a shallowly dug grave by Samus, and her grave remains a memorial site.

_Samus' Notes:_

Wish you were here.

Individuals: Alive: Human (Hybrid): Federation: Civilian: Freelance: Samus Aran (Part 1)

Samus Aran is sometimes regarded as perhaps the most important human to have ever been born. Certainly she's considered as such among those within Federation territory. Born to Rodney and Virginia Aran, the young girl was noted for her independent streak, adventurous curiosity, extremely quick learning, boisterous and physical nature, and a loving, compassionate nature from a very early age. Quicker on her feet and to learn than most, she was expected to have a bright future almost immediately. Perhaps most curiously is that the Chozo took an almost immediate interest in her fate from the moment they became aware of her existence; something they extend to almost no other humans. Assumed to be dead at first by the Federation, she would resurface ten years later, the last of her family but also the first of a new union of human and chozo.

_Samus' Notes:_

As I said, I don't really enjoy the sort of hagiography that people tend to draw around the famous. But, spirits be willing, I hope that the image people draw up around me can inspire others to do what's right. People shouldn't rely on heroes to change the world, but if I can show people that it's possible; then I'll have done good.


	8. Ragnarok (AS)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cylosis dies and Sylux is born

_Cynar star system, Cyrus' Rift, Pinwheel Galaxy_

The “Hell” class Super-Dreadnought Nifelheim translated out of N-Space as part of a substantial fleet. Twenty five kilometers at its longest point, nine kilometers wide, and more than three kilometers deep; twice that if one included the downward pointing prow spire, the Niflheim was a behemoth of the interstellar battlefields. Shaped like a broadheaded arrow, the Niflheim was built around a “hellstorm” cannon, a stupendously massive fusion cannon that would give the target the gift of a targeted supernova in miniature.  
  
The 39th Black Fleet included six of these super-dreadnoughts that formed the core of the fleet together with a trio of “Orneg” class supercarriers that were about 20% larger than their mainline combatant counterparts. But they were also being joined by the forty eight kilometer long, twenty three kilometer wide, and nine kilometer tall “Reckoning” class Star Titan “White King” and its escort. A fleet of hundreds of ships from the large to the small, the sort of armada usually committed to large scale campaigns or the assailing of worlds of extreme importance.  
  
Ordinarily even one super dreadnought and its combat group would be considered overkill against Cylosis, but the RAID was taking no chances. Enormous swarms of strike craft streamed out of the fleet, and a truly vicious bombardment of the identified defensive points began. The system lit up with the glow of weapons whose discharges could be measured by sufficiently sophisticated instruments the next system over whenever the light would eventually reach them.  
  
The _White King_ ’s gamma cannon remained silent, waiting for the emergence of something worthy of its firepower as the rapidly overwhelmed Cylosian defense fleet was reduced to shrapnel one by one. Flickering pulses of light gloomily lit the black void of space as cooling gas drifted through space and gradually lost the heat it had been infused with by the bombardment while fighters, bombers, interceptors and gunships flowed around their targets like packs of Pihranas, taking bites out of everything they could.  
  
But the fleet was not here for the meagre offerings of a picket fleet outnumbered almost fifty to one. Landing craft were disgorged like a school of fish bearing seeds that would sprout into army sized formations in a matter of moments upon contact with the ground. Their orders were clear from the moment they departed. Viper wanted the planet cleared of any and all possible complications that might interfere with their work. And they were eagre to follow the directives of the three headed master in their lair.

_Bridge of the Niflheim_

Viper sat at the centre of a command podium, their three heads; Adder, Cobra, and Mamba all busy with seperate tasks. Their wings were currently folded against their forearms, the tips extending past their shoulders while their primary fingers tapped their claws against the ground, hooves shuffling ever so slightly to adjust their vantage points while their twin tails jerked around and tended to screens that needed their attention, light sensor pods within the tails allowing them to feed data to the heads while secondary brains in the tails conferred with the primary brains in the heads. A secret that they had kept even from most of the R.A.ID so as to have a little ace in the hole; Jararaca and Taipan .  
  
The room was one of a mixture of colours, though primarily chrome and felgrau with a number of display feeds offering information to any who scanned them. With its panoramic view of the battlefield ahead, the bridge “window” was an excellent composite of images gathered from thousands of cameras, seamlessly melded onto the screens on the wall ahead. And from their perch on the third level, elevated onto a circular platform, Viper could see everything while their three primary and two secondary minds worked together constantly to form commands and judgements. It was this more than anything that made Viper such a valuable asset, they were their own command staff. Commands were issued from the cybernetic comm uplinks fitted into Viper's body, orchestrating the battle effort with ease.  
  
The crew aboard the bridge were concealed in the concealing technician armour. Their mechandrite equipped suits topped with their distinctive “duocle” helms whose protruding eye pieces were made for maximum zoom. Similarly faceless military personnel chatted amongst each other in their command pods, their instant message comms pulsed to one another wordlessly. Speaking vocally would have been a waste, and this way the Aurora Units loaned out to the force to serve as Minders were able to issue their judgements as quickly as possible. Judgements that of course, the marvelous minds of Viper always wished to review.  
  
Just below Viper's podium were their most valued assets, Dead Hand Alpha patiently waiting a chance to end this long stretch of sitting around and doing little of import. They would need to be attended to swiftly; be given a reminder why Viper valued them. The heads conferred in silence, thoughts being shared between all five brains and examined, debated, and modified as needed. Cobra flicked their gaze to Quietus and then to Veil, their two most trusted agents who weren't part of their gestalt. They would  
  
“An excellent start to our operation.” Mamba said, her throat making a small but noticeable bell like cackling vocalization. Not a laugh, more of a briefly sustained bark as they read the sensor data while Adder watched from multiple camera feeds at once, his head swaying from left to right to pick out anything of interest. Cobra looked forward through the bridge screen and remained focused on the bigger picture.  
  
“The space operation is the easy part. Our fleet outmasses and outnumbers theirs. It was never going to be a challenge. One of you, give me a report on the planet’s shielding, now.” Cobra said, their jaw snapping for emphasis. They were factual, focused, their words economically spoken.  
  
“It won’t be holding for much longer, how do you want us to play the orbital bombardment?” Quietus asked.  
  
“As much time as simply annihilating the planet would save. We are to limit orbital attack to strictly tactical usage. Give them a little hope and keep us out of the Alimbic ship’s target list.” Adder hissed, his tail rattling behind them. His voice was unsettlingly friendly, chipper even as he seemed to relish the thought.  
  
“What of the civilians?” Cyrus asked, twisting his moustache as he thought. He looked at the display of the planet below and sighed. He was troubled by what had to be done, but closed his eyes and let himself get absorbed into his duties and reminded himself that it had to be done.  
  
“No witnesses. All inhabitants are to be either relocated to black sites or terminated. Should you be too weak to carry out these orders, we have many who will show no hesitation.” Mamba said harshly, leering at Cyrus and smelling his doubt. She was clearly less than pleased that Cyrus would even raise the question.  
  
“Are you having doubts, operator?” Mamba asked. It wasn’t a pleasantly intoned question. It was cold, hostile, _mean,_ she was looking for an excuse. Viper smelled doubt and disloyalty, and Mamba was set on punishing all such weaknesses of faith. Their tongue sniffed at Cyrus whose blue eyes opened and looked at the wendigo, and he stood firm to show that he had no fear, and thus no doubt. Such also made Quietus and Veil stand down, to his relief as Cyrus backed down from open confrontation.  
  
“No...I’ll be fine.” He insisted.  
  
“Good man. There can be no room for doubt in our work. We protect the cosmos from what it must never know." Cobra hissed, flicking their forked tongue out of his skull like mouth and tasting the air as if to detect any duplicity. With a satisfied barking sound they turned away from the potential doubter and towards their business.  
  
Mercy was pacing endlessly back and forth, her legs restless as she muttered to herself, carrying on an imagined conversation entirely through sarcastic whispers and mumbles. All five of Viper's brains found the behaviour somewhat odd for someone with only one mind in a body to be carrying out, but Mamba coiled her head towards Mercy shortly afterwards and let loose a commanding growl.  
  
"Sorry I just hate waiting here I'm sick of waiting!" Mercy threw her hands down and stamped her foot.  
  
"You will be patient or you will have a problem with us. Is that understood?" She snarled, baring her teeth and extending her venomous fangs in clear threat. She had no intention of acting on the threat, but the menace behind it was very clear.  
  
Veil snorted and let out a cawing sound. "Let her build some frustration. She'll be all the fiercer for unleashing it." He said, manually polishing the barrel of his gun all the while.  
  
"For once I will agree with her...when can we be done with this?" Dagger said.  
  
"Yeah! I want to unwind! Not watch dots on holograms explode!" Mercy gesticulated for emphasis, getting an eyeroll from dagger.  
  
"Oh no need to wait...we've found our target." Quietus said as their screen flickered to show an all too pleased face while all five of Viper's minds focused on the new task.  
  
"Excellent...go forth at once, I will join you shortly." Cobra cackled as they spread their wings and began to beat them to take flight.

_Stygna Evacuation Zone playground, Cylosis._

Auroran lights danced with frightful intensity across Cylosis’ skies as what would have been civilization ending amounts of EMP to more primitive civilizations streaked to the ground from the storm of charged particles in the atmosphere. Cynar’s light was drowned out by the brilliance of the detonations in the highest reaches of Cylosis’ atmosphere and the sky danced with a rainbow of colours while the longer ranged weapons on Cylosis' surface stabbed their fury into the sky at foes he could not see.  
  
Arne looked upwards at the sky at the dance of light in the sky, not quite understanding the significance but feeling some sort of...nervous anticipation at the sight. It was like waiting for something he didn't want. Perhaps comparable to knowing he was about to be punched in the face later and being able to think of nothing else besides the inevitable impact. He bit his lower lip and looked down, trying to think of something to get his mind off of the anxiety, holding his stuffed dinosaur a little more tightly and chewing slightly on its tail.  
  
The strange roof of dancing light over the sky concealed something else. What looked like shooting stars to him as he tried to look at them with the aid of binoculars he kept in his pockets to see far away things but he soon saw that they were made of metal, and they soon grew wings once they passed into the atmosphere. Grey and olive, the forward swept wings of the craft let them level out as they split their formations to find targets. Swarms of flying wings descended towards the ground, many carrying large vehicles on hooks; others ladened with heavy ordnance they were clearly looking for targets to unleash upon.  
  
He cocked his head. They looked strange...why were they moving so fast? Weren't they worried about hitting the shields? Why weren't they stopping? And why were the Akaram towers starting to glow? He looked away, it wasn't good to look at the sword like towers when they were about to fire, especially not with red eyes like his. Questions were swirling around his brain in these last few moments of peace, curiosity was almost overwhelming in his young mind. But he felt something else, something far more unpleasant gnawing at the pit of his stomach. A cold sensation like when he was face to face with one of Cylosis’ saber-tyrants last year.  
  
 _Fear._  
  
Sickening, disquieting, like something wanted to leap out of his throat and like his heart wanted to burst. His lungs felt like they were made of metal as they expanded into a chest that felt too tight. His legs felt too light, his arms too heavy.  
  
The mournful wail of air raid sirens tore through the relative quiet he had been experiencing while playing with his toys and pets, and Hugin and Munin immediately cawed in unmitigated alarm. Geri and Freki pushed themselves up and growled with anticipation. They were expect  
  
The crack of railguns, the keening howl of lasers, the screams of missiles, the thrum of particle projector cannons, the roar of countless other varieties of weapons designed to either defend or kill Cylosis and the piercing screams of panicked and terrified people consumed the world with noise as he looked around in confusion. He needed to find some direction to turn, some avenue to get away from the current commotion. But nothing seemed clear to him, all routes seemed to fuzzy in his minnd's eye.  
  
It was so loud, why was it so loud? He covered his ears as his Ravens screamed “RUN! RUN!” He wanted to pick himself up but there was so much noise in all directions he didn’t know where to go until Gyda's hand clasped around his shirt and pulled him forward.  
  
She dragged him along with her until he started walking along with him as she made her way out of the children's area and towards the nearest designated hangar. "Arne, we need to get going. Now." She said firmly but not harshly as her helmet closed around her face and sealed itself with the hiss of air being sequestered within the helm.  
  
"What's going on?" Thelis asked.  
  
"Who are these guys?" Another said.  
  
"How'd they waste the fleet that fast?" A third said.  
  
"Sterlak station's down!" A fourth siad.  
  
"Where's the RGAN?" A fifth asked.  
  
"Alright, alright. Everyone needs to get moving. How are we on evacuation?" Erik asked, Sylan pausing as she brought forth her mechandrites to project a number of display feeds to present some data to him. His brow furrowed. Nowhere near enough to save more than a small portion of Cylosis' population, civilian N-Space or Warp drives couldn't possibly get through the interdiction fields. Most military grade drives wouldn't be able to manage either.  
  
"Where's Spire?" Morr asked, slamming home a fresh power core into his rifle. However much he had complained before, he was ready to do whatever duty he was asked of as the horizon started to be dominated by brilliant blast waves and flickering colours, the defenses of Cylosis growing ever more feeble with every passing moment.  
  
"Right here, what'd ya need?" The mammoth diamont asked, his three meter tall bulk unfurling from the spiked spherical form of the Dialanche that he had curled into for meditative reasons. Standing up on his two crystalline feet, he reared himself up to his full height and extended fingers from the orb like structure on his left arm, looking at the ground and giving a nod of affirmation.  
  
"I need for you to evacuate as soon as possible. Worst comes to worst, you take my son and the alimbic machines with you." Gyda said as she preformed one last check up on her arm cannon while Arne hugged to his father's leg, whimpering and bawling at the volume overwhelming his sensitive ears as the white haired boy received a few pats to the head from his father; concerned glances coming down from him before he looked back to his wife.  
  
Even beneath her helmet he could tell she was consumed with far more doubt than she was letting on. Her movements were underconfident, her breathing more shallow and hurried. "Can you do this for me Spire?" She asked.  
  
He looked at her as if she'd gone mad. "What about you two? I was tasked with ensuring the safety of all of you. I can't just leave you to die and trust me, you are going to die if you stay here."  
  
She gave him a sad but steady smile beneath her helmet as she looked back at the devastation falling upon the world from the heavens before she turned onto the last scion of Mondreus. "If you die, the diamonts die with you. And we can't let the Federation have access to the Ithrakoids. Besides...I've had a full life already. I'm ready to pass onto Slauganth[1] if it comes to that."  
  
Spire seemed to pause, unsure of what to say before he turned his attentions to Arne who was clearly shaking in the knees. He was scared and confused. His eyes widened as they tried to drink in every possible scrap of information to piece together even the most basic sort of understanding of the fires already starting to claim his home. But he looked at his Mother and Spire and gave a little smile while Erik stroked his cheek with a free hand. Spire looked back to Gyda and gave her an understanding nod.

_Skies above Stygna, Cylosis_

The heavy beat of leathery wings carried a nightmare aloft on them. Shaggy golden fur surrounding a wiry but muscular body as five sets of eyes looked upon the world. High pitched reverberating cackles and bellows pulsed from their many throats as they raced ahead of the other attacking R.A.I.D assets. At the speeds they were flying at, sound was a useless judge of where to head, and scent was even worse off. But their thermal and visual senses were peerless, and they zeroed in on the shielded city of Stygna. Ordinarily, such defences would require prolonged bombardment to penetrate between the planetary shields and the city's theatre screens, but Viper came prepared.  
  
The Chozo made intrapolator flickered to life and struck at the shield guarding the city of Stygna, a warping purple beam ghosting through the bubble field and spreading it wide open with an eerie violet flame that seemed to almost burn the shielding away to allow Viper and their flight straight through. Useless against the differing shield tech used for personal defence, but theatre screens such as what the EVA used easily fell prey to such technologies as the intrapolator. And that gap was all Viper needed to start their grisly work.  
  
High pitched shrieks heralded the emergence of gouts of the most bitter sort of cold that flash froze the air it passed through, streams of anti-energy produced frost pouring from all three mouths. As the air collapsed into solid forms, a deadly thunderclap followed suit from the still gaseous oxygen and nitrogen rushing to fill the void left by its liquified and solidified counterparts, producing the distinctive howl-clap of each gout of frost as they consumed city blocks at a time in each sweep of their heads while rippling detonations from the strike craft following behind them carved open a wider front for the landing troops to seize.  
  
Though there were certainly more graceful fliers in the sky, Viper still had the manoeuvrability to dodge around a rave's worth of pulsing lights being thrown his way, including the deadly killing glow of the Akram towers' fusion lasers; so named for their ability to induce nuclear fusion in even superdense targets they struck from the sheer heat they generated. Swerving away from one of the beams with a roll and dodging beneath the shorter ranged lasers as they threaded through the air like needles stitching lines of killing light, Viper flew straight at one of the towers and simply knocked into the planted sword-like haft of the defence.  
  
The impact's shockwave was fierce, but Viper didn't stop until the kilometre and a half tall tower's blade broke and the power cut to its primary emitter, bioshelding regenerating through the energy damage being caused by the searing fields while their sheer strength rewarded them with the sound of tearing metal and stone creaking apart. Sensing fatal weakness, Viper pulled back briefly and then shoved the whole thing clean apart and onto the ground with a second ram; violating the Tower's own shielding and catching the self defense emitters in sweeps of cold from their tails and other two heads that froze and imploded what they had struck; single handedly taking out a defence meant to be the match of a warship.  
  
Viper's heads scanned the area once again, beating their wings regularly to carry their great bulk forward until at last Mamba caught sight of something and alerted the other brains to the sight of their target. Gyda, Erik, and of course little Arne. Obviously, they had other escorts with them, but the soldiers landing now should be able to handle them. Especially with drop pod troopers en route. That should give Viper a straight shot at the Skjoldrs they figured, discussing a course of action amongst themselves in a silent conference.  
  
The decision was made in a split second, they would go all-in to ensure success. Nothing was to be held back lest their target slipped their grasp. "+All Dead Hand Alpha assets, we have located the primary target. Engage them at will and give me support.+" Cobra commanded as they ordered the wings to start whipping into motion once again. The thunderclap of their wings snapping to bring them to ever greater speeds trailed behind them as they prepared to dive bomb their target, sneers written upon each of their faces.

_Stygna, Cylosis, 3 minutes before Viper's arrival_

Grey coloured objects shaped somewhat like eggs approached the earthen ground of Cylosisi in a meteoric descent, with some erupting in flame as they were shot down by the defenses. But the seemingly suicidal descent could not be stopped as they slid through the gaps opened by the intrapolator,, a whistling sound only becoming obvious once they made token efforts to slow down to ensure accurate impact. In the time it took for the human eye to close and reopen, the objects had made contact with a deafening crack and a deep rumble of the tortured earth. The somewhat fist shaped objects sprouted spidery stabilization legs as they righted themselves and hissed with pressurised air.  
  
Then they threw themselves open and Grey and Olive coloured troopers bearing no insignia poured out. He only got glimpses of them, but he shuddered at the sight of their cold, thin blue glowing eye pieces. Guns clicked to life and safeties were thrown off on both sides as they made the last preparations before all out battle. But the invaders had the superior numbers and the element of surprise, and had no compulsions when it came to firing into crowded areas full of civilians.  
  
Explosions ripped through the crowd, streaking contrails coming from the large barreled guns wielded by the massive armoured men and women. Arne felt something wet on his face and wiped it, then looked to see hot crimson blood covering his hands. He looked around and his mouth opened in horror as he looked upon a person already blown into small pieces by the streaming relativistic micro-missiles; the broken skull of the victim leaking grey matter while a jaw ripped almost clean off the decapitated head hung by a few sinews, three meter tall RAID troopers swatting aside EVA militants with sound barrier violating and bone-shattering force.  
  
He couldn’t handle it, he vomited and screamed. His stomach quivered and regurgitated what he ate as his body responded to the sight of such violent death in the most natural way it could manage. Rejection, of what he ate, of what he saw, and of the thought of anything happy ever being able to come from this place that his young mind was quickly starting to associate with nauseating horror.  
  
The high pitched whines of PPR streams raced over his head and some of the grey men fell to the ground after taking shots to tear through lower-tech hab-blocks, holes steaming in their armour while EVA militants and turrets popped up to give the defence their best. Two of the troopers fell in seconds when Gyda burst their shields and cored straight through their heads with her arm cannon's hydrodynamic attachment; molten metal flinging itself at just a hair's breadth under lightspeed and streaming through them with enough force to make their heads explode.  
  
Arne looked at his hands and his heart almost seemed to stop with relief when he saw that no fresh blood was covering them. But he was quickly pushed towards the ground as Spire interposed himself between the incoming missile fire, a grunt coming from the diamont as he absorbed what were meant to be maiming shots. But he would only take so much abuse before he retaliated; a wave and star beam enhanced magmaul shot scorching its way out of his arm cannon and exploding amidst the masses of RAID troopers simply calmly stalked forward manner Arne was unlikely to forget as the superheated plasmafied magma clung to their bodies and burned.  
  
His stacked beam leaped forth in orange piercing splendour, hot steam rising from the remains of the fallen soldiers who almost seemed to collapse upon themselves as their armour suits melted and their flesh cooked into oblivion. The lucky one who approached him simply being grabbed by the Diamont and crushed like a soda can, a wet squelch heard as he crumpled the collapsing armour upon the ruined body and tossed it to the side, his weapons fire barking out repeatedly while he cut a path for the group, each heavy step heralding the fall of another enemy, shots pinging off his shielded frame.  
  
"Come on! Let's go!" Gyda shouted as she quickly pivoted on her heels to turn and grab the incoming power knife from another RAID Trooper; a powerful Commando with superior weapons and enhancements to the standard. She moved like lightning that not even Arne's eyes could follow, hand clenching at the three meter superhuman's wrist and then wrenching it in a way to force him to let go so that she could quickly grab at the falling blade and then shove it into his chest and abdomen a few times at speeds faster than those of a bullet to break his shielding before feinting towards the arm for a mobility kill; only to then push upwards and dig into the neck slicing his throat wide open before stabbing the knife into his brain to make him fall. His bioborg organ implants and gene theraphy made him a transhuman terror, but as clan champion of Grendakal her augments were both more compact and superlative in quality, while her custom designed armour outmatched his factory standard gear.  
  
"Look sharp, up top!" Morr said, popping a quadrepedal turreted drone that rose from its landing position. Two shots, one for the shield pop and the second to clip its ammo storage to set the missile ferrier off in a fireball. A massive vehicle thrown like a softball by Sylan's mechandrites as they flipped over and tossed every vehicle in sight slammed into two unbraced RAID troops, but the remaining one shoulder checked the incoming vehicle, bringing it to a halt and rattling her as she loaded up her shock cannon, the backpack she wore humming to life as she stepped forward once more.  
  
But the shock blast never came, its would-be firer receiving a starburst blast from Erik that promptly reduced most of her upper body and most of her lower body too for that matter; as well as her squadron; to steaming offal in a bright incadescant flash of unstable fusion products while scattering the rest of her to the seven winds, his gun humming as it prepared another shot, one that annihilated a light tank that rolled into view, vaporising much of its frontal portion.  
  
Another threat flashed before Arne's eyes, descending from the heavens. He squealed as he pointed above until Lydyl's psionics reached out and enwrapped the descending tank formation in the air, their treads spinning furiously without something to bite into before she rotated it to form a screen of cover, letting the metal hull of the vehicle shield them as they rushed towards the port. It didn't last long, the R.A.I.D had little compunction in having their aircraft blast apart the intervening tank to open a straighter shot. But by that point they had already passed through the Gyndraf arch, and had advanced to a deeper part of the city; shields conjured by Geri and Freki blocking off attempted killshots from behind them with transluscent bubbles that absorbed the skittering impacts that struck them.  
  
The already brutal bedlam in the city was worsened by the sound of the Akram tower "Excalibur" falling following terrible, ear grating cackling sounds. The collapse of the the mighty guardian of Stygna was almost dreamlike, almost as unreal as the horrific three headed creature that was rapidly swerving around to meet them, a beast of such cold that frosty mists were trailing their body from condensed vapours and frozen droplets that had transformed into snow. Angry red eyes turned a soul draining arctic shade of blue as Viper approached, slowing enough for their wingbeats to be audible, snake like hissing underscored by the discordant trilling like a choir gone mad with a collection of bells.  
  
"Gods protect us." Morr said as Arne froze in fear and even Spire seemed to briefly stop at the sight of the Triple King of Winter and their contemptuous sneers, their body undulating through the air like a horrible whale of some sort, going up and down in a wave motion with each flap of their mighty wings. But despite the shaggy fur of the wendigo, all Arne could thing of was a snake with forked tongues and fangs full of poison eager to devour him. A monstrous demon fresh from his nightmares and born into a terrible material reality.  
  
"You are coming with me. Make this easy upon yourselves and give up now. Or we will have no choice but to make a mess of this situation." A simple declaration of fact from the mouth of Cobra as they began to hover nearby, their wingbeats blowing wind that felt like their chill was crawling straight down Arne's skin and into every nerve fiber in his body.  
  
Their wing beats were rhythymic, carefully timed in tandem with their deletrious effects on the local temperature to keep their body in one place without having to stroke them furiously like a hummingbird or insect. A swing of their legs brought them into a more upright position, hooved hind feet dangling below while the tails flicked back and forth, giving Arne the impression that they were looking at him, and he swore that they even blinked.  
  
"Spire, give him our reply." Gyda said, the Diamont Freelancer nodding as his cannon charged, and then clicked as missiles were fed into the Starbeam. A star was born, and if that weren't enough, the craggy giant began to walk, then run, then sprint. Rippling energies surrounded him as his Diamont armour surrounded him in the crackling fields of the Speed booster and a sudden stop and shoulder angling was all he needed to launch himself in a hypersonic shinespark that caught Viper in a Double Whammy to bowl them out of the sky, roars of protest bellowing forth from their three throats while the bellowing howls of the Magmaul were heard in the distance, the two disappearing for now; wrestling with a fury to shake the whole world.  
  
"That's not going to keep him down for long urglik Gyda, and we're a thousand times more exposed without our best fighter. No offense to you." Sylan said, her optics pulling back out of zoom mode while she coddled Arne in some of her mechandrites, some of her other vocoders busy trying to sing a lullaby to him as he bawled and heaved; Hugin and Munin flapping nearby and letting out stressed caws as they perched upon Erik and Gyda's shoulders.  
  
Erik looked at Geri and Freki and then at Arne. His eyes were full of an intense resentment. "Why are you two just sitting there? What's the big deal with all of you hiding in your ship? Come on! Do something!" He shouted at the machines. He wagered that there was a link between them and their mothership. They had to have loaned these accursed things to monitor them. So he felt entirely justified in letting them have it.  
  
"We're dying out here! Where's the mighty Order if you can't save a single one of these people huh? Maybe that's why you all died out. Because nothing you stood for meant a damn thing! Order, protection, what a crock! So I hope you're happy Zurvduat. I'd say this is all on your head but some Imperialist gloryhound like you probably doesn't give half a damn!" He shouted at the machines before he shook his head irritably, Gyda patting him on the shoulder and clinking her helmet to his.  
  
"We'll get out of this. Don't worry." She said, a sad sigh coming from Erik as a skittering sound could be heard in the distance, something with many legs was close by and Morr pinged an instant message to get the group moving as fast as possible, not liking the sound of what he was hearing.

Morr stopped and shot at the incoming shape, making it skitter away from him as if a fire were lit under them. But his cybernetic optics zoomed in shortly afterwards, unwilling to let the target go without confirming that they were dead. "Come on you son of a bitch, get on out from there!" Morr shouted as he shot once again, aiming for where they were going rather than where they were, getting the satisfying sound of a round slamming home against the pursuer's shielding. And for a time, the skittering stopped and there was quiet. Arne, having already slipped on some earmuffs to protect his eardrums, shook slightly from the sensation of the projectile's sonic wake. He whimpered slightly but calmed when he was pat by his father.  
  
Erik's fingers laced themselves through Arne's hair reassuringly, his kind gaze making his fear subside, even if only for a bit. The noise and heat of the outside world faded, even the fact that he was holding a star cannon seemed irrelevant. He was here, and he loved him, and that made everything seem unimportant "Shh...it'll be alright little eagle." He was assured as he clung to his father's leg.  
  
He looked to his father with questioning eyes, gulping somewhat. He wasn't as scared anymore, but a question rumbled around in the inside of his skull. He had a moment now, and he wanted something answered. "W...why are they here dad?" He asked. It was a fair question, a question to put his mind at peace in the brief moments of quiet that they had.  
  
Erik had no answer, nothing he could explain to a three year old at least. How did they know to send such overwhelming force here already? Why were they set on killing even the civilians? He had heard rumours that the Federation had a secret paramilitary unit, the pet attack dogs of the Central Intelligence Network. Wraithlike Raiders who would come and go without warning whom even the military was kept intentionally in the dark about. It was clear they were here for the Alimbic artifacts, and that they were intending to leave no witnesses, but beyond that he couldn't offer a good answer, and that was outright _painful_ for him.  
  
The quiet was short lived however, _she_ came back, a twisting tendril with a sharp end stabbing towards Morr who only barely ducked to the side and swore out loud as it dug into the side of the wall. Ferrocrete cracked away from the silvery tendril even before it wormed back to its progenitor, its owner snarling in an inhuman manner as a thicket of legs scrambled for purchase to bring her closer into view, a volley of telekinetically launched projectiles only barely being stopped by a screen wall of telekine energy. The purplish energy field was soon dropped after having forced the projectiles to expend themselves against it, and its creator clenched her fist into a ball.  
  
"Oh fun, a psychic. Why don't you and I play with each other for a bit hrm? Give little old Mercy a bit of enjoyment while she's on the job." A feminine voice said, making Arne's skin crawl with revulsion. It was far too friendly sounding for the clear menace behind the words. Lydl seemed ready to have a go, her muscles tensed beneath her suit as she adjusted her stance, ready to leap into action at a moment's notice until Morr brought his hand in front of her.  
  
"Nah, I've got this. You go on ahead."  
  
Gyda snapped her head towards him in concern. "You're going to die if you take her alone Morr."  
  
"Yeah, probably painfully too. But you've got a kid. We stick around and the three headed thing's going to come back for us while we fight. Look, honour serving with you and all, but we all knew most of us weren't getting off this rock. And Arne, when you grow up, please send this asshole's ashes to my gravesite." He said, giving a thumbs up to Arne as Gyda directed a sad nod in his direction; a quick snap of his arms sending thrown explosives from the sharpshooter cutting off Mercy's path towards the group as he looked at his foe and sighed.  
  
Arne didn't see what happened as he was pulled away, his eyes shielded from the flash of the explosions and the sound of gunfire. He looked to his mother, and saw her sink her head slightly and mutter something in the Uskarling language, a farewell and a thank you for the time they had together.  
  
But the bellowing menace of Viper hot on their heels jolted them into motion, the crows dutifully taking flight to search around for an avenue out. A quick glance outside the nearest window only confirmed what the stench of fire and death was telling him; everything was burning and what resistance there was left was slowly but surely diminishing. The bellowing grew louder and urged them to go faster until it suddenly stopped, a pregnant silence casting its shadow over the group until one of Viper's heads exploded through the ceiling in a spray of rock, screaming coming from Arne while Hugin and Munin cawed in panic; Geri and Freki firing up a shield to block a deadly burst of frost spat forth from Cobra's jaws at the group, letting the blue-white wave of winter crash against the hemisphere and wash into the sides of the building.  
  
"GIVE ME THE BOY!" Cobra snarled as they snapped their jaw at them, teeth crashing into the field reinforced by Lydyl's telekinetics and forcing them to back their head off. Sylan's mechandrites fired up with laser weaponry, pulsing explosions rippling across Cobra's head and making him flinch and cry out in frustration, letting a shot down his throat from both Gyda and Erik, white flashes of light burning inside the Wendigo's mouth as they pulled their head back, roaring in imperious fury before Spire crashed into Viper's side hard enough with the crackling orange and yellow buzzsaw of energy of the screw attack; front flipping with enough force to slice open Viper's side; steaming offal issuing from the rapidly regenerating wound while the impact threw them off the building, the two rolling off the roof and onto the side with a heavy crash.  
  
RAID troopers who sought to get in their way were quickly met with Geri and Freiki's jaws as the mechanoids lead the diminished fireteam; snapping their petal mouths onto the helmets of the troopers designated by Gyda before they could get their heavy weapons going. Pained grunts came out of the dying federal soldiers, two knocked to the ground with steaming holes in them from Gyda's weapon before she casually extended her armour's powered wrist blade and thrusted it into the head of a shield popped heavy trooper, punching through her armour with some resistance before slicing downwards to bisect her to clear the way forward.  
  
"Come on!" She shouted, Arne whimpering at the violence surrounding him as his legs tried to carry him fast enough to keep up. The windows exploded shortly afterwards, making him squeal as he dropped to the ground. The surprisingly light boots of Cyrus and Dagger clacked onto the ground, their frames rising from their buckled knee position with weapons loaded to bear. An arm cannon from the huntsman and a pair of power blades from the assassin.  
  
"Turn yourselves in, let's not make this messier than it already is." Dagger said plainly and without flourish. Her gaze flicked towards a quivering Arne for a second and a sigh was produced from beneath her helmet while Cyrus paced back and forth, cannon pointed at the handfuls of survivors.  
  
"My apologies that it had to come to this, but we have jobs to do." Cyrus said.  
  
Sylan said nothing, explosively leaping behind the group with a teleportation device that gave off a red flash of light before her laser cutters fired up to collapse part of the ceiling. Operating entirely on her programming, she gave only a small nod to the Skjoldrs and Lydyl before the crumbling facade of ferrocrete separated them, her mechandrites spinning to life and extending their claws before she pounced at her foes to keep them occupied.  
  
Arne yelped before he was tossed onto the back of Geri by Freiki, the machines quickly calling the two crows to them to ride on the other's back while they smashed through the walls to give the group an exit. But such offered only temporary reprieve as they spilled onto the streets, Lydyl only barely yanking the group back to avoid a gout of frost from Viper's outer heads as the three-headed beast galloped towards them, the middle head headbutting a kneeling Spire out of the way and sending him into the ground with a heavy crash, rolling on his sides before he curled into the Dialanche to arrest his momentum with the crystalline spikes of his alternative form. The creature didn't seem injured at all.  
  
"What use is there in running? Where can you hide? Where can you run? Why not just give up now?" Adder hissed.  
  
"There is nowhere you can flee to that we cannot follow. Bow before us and we may show you mercy." Mamba growled.  
  
"I am as inevitable as time itself. You cannot hope to best us, spare yourselves the wasted effort of resistance." Cobra barked, their claws crushing down on the corpses of fallen soldiers while their forked tongue flicked out of their mouths and a reverberating growl issued forth from their throat.  
  
Erupting fireballs from exploding SAM sites elicited a frightened shriek from Arne as he clung even more tightly to Geri. A frightened apology escaped his lips and tears began to flow from his face as the hellish chorus of Viper rang louder and louder in his ears. But the sounds of heavy metal objects thundering towards them drew his attention, Quietus emerging from above a building held aloft by long tentacles of metal sprouting from their back and the flickering form of Veil's mech releasing a spread of missiles and a pair of cannon bolts only barely stopped in time by Lydyl who shielded the group in a dome of energy as Spire wearily pulled himself to his feet.  
  
Quietus dropped a number of corpses impaled to the claw hands of their tentacles while their screen displayed a simple, stylised, and disturbingly beatific expression while Veil's mech flickered out of visibility entirely, even the sounds it made being muffled into silence to allow them the element of surprise. Lydyl fell to a knee, hands on the ground before she looked at Erik and Gyda as they pointed their weapons at the encroaching Dead Handers.  
  
"I do enjoy it when they resist." Quietus chuckled as they moved to flank the group with Veil and Viper as they had so many times before.  
  
"Keep focused, command wants a clean, quickly done op." Veil scolded.  
  
"Nowhere to run now, is there?" Cobra said mockingly as they approached.  
  
"We'll see about that." Spire said, looking towards the sky and giving the closest approximation of a smile as a streaking shape raced above. A look of wonder coming from Arne and a sense of relief ever so briefly washing over him like there might just be relief from this dreadful nightmare.  
  
His gunship; a craggy tear drop shaped thing made of rock like substances and crystalline composites; swooped overhead to shower Viper in bombs, prompting the hateful serpent to roar in fury as their body was engulfed in vaporising flames. They responded in kind however, lancing beams of cold death spraying out of their mouths to try and catch the accursed thing as it sweeped towards its landing zone, missiles rippling out of side pods to shower the foe in explosives while the top entry hatch opened up; the click and clink of its release inaudible in the indecipherable maelstrom of noise engulfing Cylosis, the craft increasingly hard to distinguish from the great pillars of flame rising ever higher from the burning ruin of Stygna.  
  
But a second wave of attacks from the Dead Hand lashed out of the fire left by the gunship; impacting Lydyl's shields and making her fall to her knees as she extended her arms and cried out. She groggily pushed herself up, breathing heavily beneath her armoursuit and straining to resist the wave of fire being thrown into her from two opponents at once.  
  
"I can take care of myself...get to Spire's gunship. I'll catch up with you. I promise." She said wearily.  
  
Gyda gave her a sad look, already realising that this was not a promise Lydyl could, or even had any intention of keeping. "It's not nice to lie like that to us Lydyl."  
  
"I'm sorry I couldn't do better." She said gently before a telekinetic push shoved the group away from her as another wave of fire engulfed her position. Arne cried out for her, but Geri turned around to take her out of his field of view while the heavy sounds of thunderous footfalls boomed not so far away, the sounds of angered roars and weapons fire quickly filling his ear drums as the nightmarish vision of Viper, crackling bioshielding seemingly inviolable as they stepped ever close, hissing and shifting heads letting loose more and more deadly fountains of anti-energy.  
  
Everything touched by the pillars of blue-white death froze to sculptures that shattered with their passing, every soldier who did not yet fall to the blur like motions of the RAID troopers who dared to raise their hands against the nightmare was reduced to dust by its awful voice. An artillery barrage erupted around Viper with the drumroll of heavy munitions volley firing, containment fields trying to focus the powers of the blast on Viper, only for them to emerge from geography rearranging firepower with a hateful sneer.  
  
They could have gone much faster, but they clearly wanted to scare them, making their invincibility obvious as they obliterated the insolent militants trying to distract them before Arne's vision went blank temporarily and he found himself looking at a completely different angle of Viper. He took less than a second to realise that he had been teleported into Spire's vessel while Spire made the final sprint to the ship; joining him with a final heavy leap that brought him into a heavy landing within the stony and spartan interior of the vessel  
  
His parents were running as fast as they could, cutting through the RAID troops who had moved to intercept them; from tanks to infantrymen; but Viper once again emerged from the fires of hell, stomping behind them. Serpentine heads cackling and calling, the orange and black tinged sky giving them a truly hellish appearance.  
  
As the last mech in the Skjoldr's way fell face-first into the ground after Gyda had jumped upon it and lobbed a grenade down a hole in the cockpit she had shot open; the two were so close to Spire's ship that Arne could make out their eyes behind their transparent mode visors, strained but relieved. Gyda even laid her hand on the cockpit window of the gunship as Arne rushed forward, eyes full of hope as he placed his hand on the other side of the window, staring into his parents' eyes with a tearful smile.  
  
"Mom...dad...can we go now?"  
  
"Come on! We've got no time to lose!" Spire shouted over the din of battle. Hugin and Munin cried out in alarm as another of Viper's high pitched triple calls drowned out all other noise. Their heavy footfalls called the elder Skjoldr's attention behind them shortly after the sonerous challenge. Every step closer and closer than the last. They had no intention of just letting them leave no matter how much spire's ship fired into them, powering through whatever blows they could not dodge or intercept.  
  
A wall of frost breath and cold streams from every orfice striking down anything that might seek to test their shielding or hide from their wrath, heads snaking and twisting continually to avoid incoming blows and their sinister body undulating to make for a surprisingly frustrating target. But their cold blue eyes stared with murderous intent, high pitched death rattles reverberating out.  
  
"You can't escape us!" Mamba howled.  
  
"We will find you wherever you seek to flee!" Cobra roared.  
  
"Give up and join us or die with your planet, it's useless to resist!" Adder shrieked.  
  
A quick calculus was made. Viper was a swift if not supremely agile flier, they'd be able to keep pace with the _Cragimoch_ if they just fled together. And then all of them would die. But if some of them stayed behind and pulled Viper's attentions away... They looked again at Viper and then back to Spire and Arne.  
  
"Mom...Dad..." Arne said quietly, while even the Ravens seemed to tense.  
  
"What are you doing!? We have to go! Come on you idiots! What are you...no...you can't." Spire said, his words going from angry to distraught and then finally disbelieving as Viper approached implacably and the two looked to one another and then opened their face masks to give Arne a sad smile that let Spire know what they wanted to do immediately.  
  
A sinking feeling dug into Arne's soul, his young mind realising that they were also going to leave themselves behind like everyone else. And even though he realised faintly that there was no way they were going to escape the three headed demon unless someone stayed behind, he didn't want to believe it. He didn't want to accept it. "No..." Arne mouthed, tears welling in his eyes as he shook his head, his voice cracking heavily.  
  
"I'm sorry, little eagle." Gyda said, choking back tears as she closed her visor and turned back to Viper; Erik giving his son one last pained smile and mouthing the words "goodbye" before he followed suit, the two hopping off of the nose of the ship as Arne screamed louder than he ever had in his life. His emotional state shattered into a million pieces, dropping to his knees and wailing every word he could think of that he thought they might listen to, anything to make them listen, anything to make them come back, trying to reach for anything that looked like it could bring him to the exit before Spire pulled him back.  
  
"Erik! Gyda!" Spire shouted, but it was too late. They fired off the flight packs on their suits and let loose with everything they had upon the wintery body of Viper while Spire's ship rose to the heavens; the earth behind it splintering apart as the _Caesarian Lance_ began to rise from the ground; thousands of years worth of built-up earth falling away.  
  
But all Arne could see were the last flickers of light from his parents' weapons in a fight they couldn't win if they had a million attempts to try and all he could hear was that demonic cackling. He banged his fist again and again on the cockpit window until his hands were bloody, he was crying to the point of dehydration, and wailing until his throat burned while the hatch of the ship closed.  
  
They fought like archangels, moving with superhuman flashes of grace and skill. Their bodies twisting, turning, firing everything they had in a duel to the death against a creature who could not die. They were valiant, the RAID troopers who cut down so much of the EVA around them falling in turn before them; transsophontic terrors crumpling in bloody heaps. But Viper never fell.  
  
Viper was eternal, a nightmare without end. They were fast, far too fast for something of their size, able to move like a blur even on the ground. And they had firepower a plenty, enough to overwhelm even the clan champion and her husband, even as thousands of RAID corpses piled around them, Viper was wearing, beating them down. Taking their time. They had not secured Arne, but this would be where Gyda's legend ended.  
  
And with one, final flash of blue and white from all three of Viper's heads and the deafening silence that followed as Spire's ship disappeared above the clouds, his pained, puffy eyes staring at the sensor feed in agonized despair; his heart shattered. He had no more words left, and fell to the ground in wretched sobs, not even noticing the ship making its final ascent, following the rising _Caesarian Lance_ closely. Even Hugin and Munin cawed no more, simply hanging their heads in silence while Spire looked sadly at the boy and pat his shoulder. He knew not what to say, but he understood the pain of suddenly being alone in the universe.

* * *

** Sylux's logbook **

Planets: Pinwheel Galaxy: Cyrus' Expanse: Human Habitable: Ensryn Volunteer Army Occupied: Visited: Cylosis (Part 2)

Following the uncovery of Alimbic technologies on the world of Cylosis, including the buried Battlecruiser _Caesarian Lance_ and its still active crew; the Federation Central Intelligence Network dispatched the _Mordred_ 's 39th Black Fleet under the command of Operator 333; Viper; to neutralise all EVA assets and secure the planet for study. Viper pursued this task with the usual brutality and wiped out virtually all intelligent life on the planet within two hours. The death of General Taskaril signalled the final collapse of EVA resistance on the planet. However, the withdrawal of the _Caesarian Lance_ lead to the Federation losing interest in the planet, especially as more ODOCR friendly assets were dispatched to investigate the sudden silence from Cylosis. Cylosis' ecology has suffered serious damage from the devastation and is currently in the throes of an ice age due to the long term effects of orbital bombardment winter. Recolonization efforts have prevented a mass extinction event, but most former urban areas remain ruins.

_Arne's notes:_

I still visit. I don't tell anyone who I am. I just look around and try to see if I can find anything left over from when I used to live there. I don't know how to feel about new people moving in. It feels almost profane, like they're walking on graveyards. But it's not fair to keep it a tomb either. I just hope they don't tear down our old apartment. I wouldn't be able to take losing it.

Individuals: Paramilitary: Leftist Revolutionary: ODOCR aligned: EVA: Human: Female: Deceased: Gyda Skjǫldr

Gyda Skjǫldr was born to the Grendakal clan of the Uskarling culture and chose the life of a warrior out of her own fascination with combat and a well developed sense of outrage against injustice. From then on, she would graduate as the valedictorian in her class at the military academy of Almok, demonstrating a particularly adept knack for irregular warfare, regime destruction, and personal combat. Joining the Ensryn Volunteer Army out of a desire to "fight the good fight", Gyda would achieve substantial fame and notoriety as the hero of the oppressed to some and an omnipragmatist terrorist to others. She was a continual presence on the wanted lists of many governments up until her demise during the scourging of Cylosis. Upon confirmation of her death, clan Grendakal arranged a funeral on her homeworld of Skolva, attended to by a number of prominent figures who offered eulogies. Noted as gentle but firm in command, a devoted wife, and an adoring mother, her death was widely mourned; not least of all by her family. She is survived by Arne Skjǫldr.

_Arne's notes:_

There's nothing I wouldn't give for another day with her. She's everything I want to be, and she'll always be my hero. I think you've earned slauganth, and I hope you can see me from there. If there's anything I can do, please give me a sign. I miss you, mom, I always will.

Individuals: Paramilitary: Leftist Revolutionary: ODOCR aligned: EVA: Human: Female: Deceased: Erik Skjǫldr

Erik Skjǫldr was born to the Frybarg clan of the Uskarling culture and was drawn to the path of the insurgent by a well nurtured belief in the necessity to fight for freedom and the eventual hope for long term peace by transforming the world one currently lives in. Graduating as the salutorian in the same class as Gyda, and would fall in love with and marry her in short order. Though they held off on having a child for a number of years due to the necessities of long combat deployment, he would eventually father his only son Arne with her during their deployment to Cylosis. Known for nearly always being at his wife's side and heavily doting upon his son, Erik was often called Gyda's shadow for how close the two of them were to each other. Virtually all plans the two made were always reviewed by the other within moments of conception, and the two's fighting style came to be heavily dependent on cooperation with each other. He would die simultaneously with his wife on Cylosis, the two's remains locked in embrace before shattering into dust. He is survived by his son Arne Skjǫldr.

_Arne's notes:_

I always wonder what he'd think of me now. Am I making him proud? Is he still watching me? Or has he already found his next life? I just hope, whatever the case; that he's still with mom. I think he'll have achieved slauganth, he did great things, and I hope I can do just as good.

Units: Paramilitary: Leftist Revolutionary: ODOCR aligned: EVA: Wiped Out: Fireteam Raptor Noir

Fireteam Raptor Noir was assembled by Gyda and Erik Skjǫldr to serve as a highly effective combat force comprised out of the couple, the extremely skilled Ivakti marksman and demolition expert Morr, the notable Aelrani Psion Lydyl, and the multi-purpose synthetic Sylan. Together, the five had accomplished hundreds of missions across hundreds of planets and had gained enough notoriety to be flagged for neutralization or recruitment by the R.A.I.D. However given their fervent devotion to the E.V.A's anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist endeavours, recruitment was always considered a long shot without captive reprogramming. The five considered one another to be akin to family, and so were picked off one by one in the fall of Cylosis; exploiting their willingness to die to ensure that Arne and Spire could survive to split the Fireteam and slaughter it piecemeal. All five members have been confirmed KIA.

_Arne's notes:_

The name is kind of...goofy, but I like it. Maybe I'm just a sucker for silly stuff? Who can say really. I wish I got to know them better. But I know they all had to have been good people if they didn't even hesitate to do what they did. The monument to them is pretty cool too. Just wish it did more to recognise Spire.

Individuals: Civilian: ODOCR Citizen: Uskarling: Clan Grendakal: Human: Male: Arne Skjǫldr (Part 1)

The only son of Gyda and Erik Skjǫldr was only three years old when he was orphaned by the R.A.I.D's assault on Cylosis following being gifted by Alimbic mechanoids dispatched to examine humanity's potential as a species that the remaining Alimbics could ue as a baseline for a new generation of warrior. He was regarded as precocious, bright, physically active, somewhat on the timid side but able to show courage if backed into a corner or if he feels a task is important. Arne Skjǫldr was initially presumed dead due to the extend of the devastation visited upon Cylosis, but was discovered to have been rescued by the Freelance Space Hunter Spire who had instead deposited him into the care of the Alimbic population of the Battlecruiser _Caesarian Lance._ In essence, adopted by the enigmatic aliens who had previously shown interest in human potential.

_Arne's Notes:_

Despite everything else, it's still me. I feel like I'm trapped in a spider's web of secrets and I can barely sort through the deceit I deal with every day, and the universe seems set on showing me its worst face time after time again but I'll always be the Avenging Son. And my duty as that bringer of vengeance is to ensure that the people who live in this cosmos are safe, free, and comfortable. To be anything less is to let everyone else down.

[1]Uskarling afterlife for those who have lived a life worthy enough to break free of the cycle of reincarnation.


	9. Ash and Dust (Interlude)

_K-2L Ruins_

The howling notes of desolation blew across the empty landscape as ash and dust clung to a charnelhouse of tree corpses and burnt buildings. The wildlife had been similarly slaughtered for amusement derived from petty cruelties or sneering frustrations or to feed the empty bellies of emaciated milita troops and penal battalions. They didn't even spare the pets or the infants. There was nothing worse in the entire universe than a bored or angry space pirate looking for someone weaker than them to vent on after a long day of being beaten, starved, and bullied by their superiors. A chain of abuse from High Command all the way down to the lowliest militia peon pulled out of the slums and prisons and thrown into the meat grinder. That made them more than nasty to do this to a billion times a billion planets if they had half the chance.

And as such all they left was memories in the form of the soot that clung to Samus' clothes. The last of the pirates had packed up and left on whatever ships they could grab ahold of after the _Scourge_ was disintegrated into the basest of subatomic particles by Rodney's sacrifice. So all that was left was her and a little Rabil whose fur had been stained black and grey from the products of the fire. If she weren't so scared and so young the fact that even the fire itself had died would have been funny. But there was no trace of the mighty blaze that had scorched the Neorai forests into a gravesite. Her lungs once ached, but the oxygen masks she had salvaged and the nanosalve she sought out just as her parents always told her to if she was hurt or sick had given her reprieve.

But perhaps the most upsetting thing of all was the silence.

The wind blowing through was the only sound besides what she and Pyonchi made herself. No animals sang, no trees rustled, no voices spoke besides her constantly calling for parents who couldn't respond. She had put dirt on her mother's blackened body, she didn't know why people did that with those who had fallen and were beyond the ability of nanotechnology to recover, but she hoped it would make her feel better, she had so much blood coming out of her and she looked so terrible with all that black stuff on her...so skinny and peeled. But it had been a long time and she hadn't gotten up, and papa was nowhere to be seen. If this was a game of hide and seek, she didn't like it. It was quiet, it was cold, and it was _lonely_.

The sun was no longer shining. Clouds of ash blotted it out across the planet and she wouldn't have been able to make out what time it was if it weren't for the wrist computer she wore habitually. It was only thanks to the machine that she knew that she'd been wandering for hours, and in that time she hadn't seen a single other living creature. It was close to bed time, but she couldn't find a place to sleep. Her parents would be upset if she slept on the ground again.

She felt tired though...they wouldn't blame her if she took a little nap right? But she just needed to find some place soft to do so. The ground was full of sharp things. Sterile yes, not even the microbes survived Ridley's fire, but she wasn't really giving much thought to microbiology. Even if she knew what that meant at this point in time she wouldn't have put much thought into it.

But she saw something moving in the distance. Something that made her blue eyes open wider as the clouds of dust wafted away, blown by an artificial wind that kicked them far away and made Pyonchi prick their ears up high and twitch their nose in excitement. Something was coming, a number of somewhat familiar shapes and a much larger mechanical figure built almost like a tank or a mech of some sort, armatures festooned with guns to either side as it rolled forward rather than walked before stopping. Behind these shapes, great machines that walked on spidery legs and held mighty cylinders high in their great arms scanned through the ruins, red optics seeming intent on finding _something, anything_ that might still live through the rubble, whirling drills cracking through barren earth to extract remains with seemingly impossible precision for such cumbersome looking things.

"Ghor, can you see anything?" A voice said. A _familiar_ voice.

"Old Bird?" She said hesitantly, not sure if it was just more of her mind making things up. Things were so quiet her mind was making her own imagery.

"Samus?" The voice said with hesitant recognition.

The large mechanical shape swivelled its torso around to her. "A survivor? She looks like she's been through hell. Hold on...come here, you're safe now." The somewhat mechanical voice of the famous cyborg Hunter said as more of the Chozo appeared nearby, all in robed armour and all having some sort of head decoration. They fixated their attentions on her, seeming to have known she'd be here but seeming almost surprised by the reality of anything being alive in this wasteland, let alone someone as vulnerable as a toddler.

"W-where's mama and papa..." She said weakly.

"Let's worry about that later. Please, come here." Old Bird offered as he extended his arms, bringing to mind a bird extending his wings as he let her approach him. She rushed towards him, crossing the ashen wasteland in little time before he swept her up in his aged arms and held her tight. She hugged him like he would disappear into ash the second she let go. She sobbed with relief, her emotions crashing all at once the second her body recognised that it was safe to expend precious water on tears and make the loud, ugly sounds of crying.

"Shh...shhh...no one will hurt you." Old Bird said, hugging her tight to him.

"There are orphanages we can deposit her to." Grey Voice cut in as he seemingly materialised to the side of Old Bird, muttering a prayer to himself after his words. His mind focused and he got glimpses of the final memories of the departed. A simple magic, but one that gave him no small deal of concern. Such malignant energies from this place

Brutal raids like this were increasing in frequency every day and Mother Brain needed the supplies they were sent to procure as soon as possible. He sighed, the Diggernauts would be needed to do the work from scratch after all it seemed.

"Zebes is but a moment of travel away. We need not burden the foster care system with our errors." August said, offering a humble bow as she suggested her course of action.

Ghor's optics fixated on the ancient, he was not about to let them go through with this line of thought. "This is not your fault, it never will be your fault. Don't go about blaming yourselves for the actions of the confederates or else you'll never be able to live with yourselves." He said roughly before his hulking mech opened up to let a spindly, digitrade figure that made Samus seek to hide herself away as her tired mind associated his silvery shape with memories of the unending fire and destruction. She let out a wail and hugged into Re-Sekh's body.

"Ah...my apologies, I am Ghor. Please forgive my resemblance to some varieties of space pirate. I mean you no harm, I'm here to protect these fine people from them actually." He said, laying his metallic hands over his chest and giving her a small bow.

"What about me?" She asked, her voice small and gentle.

"Especially people like you. I'm a Freelancer." He said, the mandibles on his cybernetic head opening up and forming the rough approximation of a human smile. The attempt looked silly enough to make Samus smile, but she was too tired to laugh.

"What's that mean?"

"It's short for Freelance Space Hunter or Agent, but Freelancer flows much more swiftly off of the tongue." He said, pausing briefly. "Or perhaps the vocoders in my case. These people asked me to make sure they were safe while they looked for people like you." He said, gesturing respectfully to the Chozo.

"Wow...can I be like you?" She said, eyes starry with wonderment.

"Hopefully without replacing so much of your body. But I'm sure you'll do great. Here, I think he'll agree." He said, offering a hand holding a child's toy, a little mechanical pet like a small lizard that had survived the firestorm that torched K-2L's inhabited areas to so much dust in the wind. She seemed delighted to see the machine, not quite recognising it for she did not know every single person at the settlement by heart, but her eyes lit up at the way the mechanical gecko, chrome and turqoise like marine armour; crawled around her arm and onto Pyonchi's fur. This distracted her enough for the Chozo to commune without interruption. She came to decide on a name for it, Okmin, and gave it her greetings.

"And now that we have guaranteed her safety, we should continue to do so by placing her among her own countrymen, preferably her own species." Grey Voice was stern as ever.

Old Bird was adamant though, they had erred by leaving the people of K-2L to their fate. They needed to make amends. This place was stained quite literally with the weight of the atrocity committed here. It would be burnt into the soul of this world, and even the life that survived the death of the colonists seemed subtly twisted by the malevolent deeds committed. The animals had become nastier, more aggressive, vicious in their battle to survive the collapse of the ecosystem. Ridley's evil had poisoned the spirits of this place like a toxic chemical spill leeching into the soil and turning all the plants and animals twisted and foul. Yet here was someone who remained pure, whose soul retained its nobility and innocence.

"I'm sorry Somek-Ka, but I believe that I owe it to a friend to care for her after a tragedy of this magnitude. I will not leave her to the whims of chance by placing her for adoption. We are bringing her home."

"And what of you, Isa-Hesh?" Grey Voice asked.

She rapped her gauntleted fingers on her beak and had a moment to think before she gave a slow nod. "I agree. More to the point, her parents have ruined many a career today. There will be a blood price on her head to settle the score. Ridley and Weavel will send their rabid hounds after her to save face and vent their frustrations. She would be dead in a few months if we were to drop her in the lap of some orphanage, as would everyone else on the planet or station we placed her in. And if we think to put her somewhere the Pirates would not dare attack openly, they would just send assassins." She said, thinking of and then running through every point that came to mind in a single go.

"We could offer her security. I do not see why we need to bring the young of another species to Zebes when we did not deign to even raise our own children there. We are scientists and academics, not the minders of an orphanage. She would have no others of her kind to keep her company, whether that be other children or other humans. She would grow up isolated, maladjusted and forever a social outcast. Think of her sake before you seek to fill our empty nests."

"If I may." Ghor said, raising his hand.

"I can help her liase with the outside world. She need not grow too isolated."

"Then there is no reason to delay. We can leave at once and make our arrangements for her upon our arrival."

_Tourian, Zebes_

"-You brought this mammal into our domain?-" A voice, far colder than anything Samus had ever heard before said, her oppressive telepathy like the weight of an elephant on every square nanometre of her mental landscape. Her voice was metallic, it like a claw wrapped around her brain squeezing to demand respect and obedience. Like an overly stern and disdainful mother irritated with children who wouldn't stop spilling milk on her carpet and didn't care for pleas that modern domestic technology made clean up a labor free endeavour. After all, what mattered was that the decorum had been breached.

"-She won't last a day. The gravity of Zebes will break her skeletal structure with the most minor of falls and substantially strain her heart; and the air will require constant treatment or prosthetic to allow her to tolerate it. Then there are the wild animals and flora who would doubtlessly have consumed her the moment she wanders from the safe regions of Crateria and Chozodia or within our other bases. Has the passing of time made you take leave of your senses Re-Sekh? What possible value could this child have to our agenda?-" She said, her oculi drones swarming around Samus, sterile lenses picking apart her every detail for the enormous, grotesque Brain displayed in perfect quality by the hologram projected from special lumomolecules aiming at the centre of the room to analyse.

The hologram dominated the metallic, clearly artificial room that they were all gathered within. The staff of the Zebes base and its tributary facilities represented either in the flesh or through projection floating around the central chamber. Whereas most Chozo architecture sought some degree of harmony with nature, the constructs here were designed along far more military lines. Tourian was a fortress, a redoubt meant to be impervious to the outside world in case the worst happened and to guard their most precious works, as such aesthetic concerns were thrown out the window at the design of the master of this place. She was Mother Brain, and if Zebes had a master, it was her.

Samus recoiled from the swirling tornado of machines that refused to offer her the personal space she and her rabil companion needed, the mechanical Gecko she had also taken to adopting raising its tail in alarm at the continual stares of Mother Brain's drones. "It's so lonely here...there's no one to play with." Samus said meekly, trying to avoid a staring contest with Mother Brain's Oculi swarm. She looked to the Chozo who gazed down on her in their many robed and armoured forms, each one having somewhat differentiated gear and robes that would have told her a library's worth of knowledge about each of them if she understood the significance of any of it.

"-Such is why you are ill suited to remain here.-" Not a trace of sympathy in her voice, not even the barest attempt at understanding, Samus felt her cheeks flare and glared scornfully at the drone. She didn't understand every word coming from the machine's telepathic presence but she knew when she wasn't welcome. And right now she wasn't in the mood to take this kind of heat from an oversized anatomy study.

August would be the first of the Chozo to speak against the grand design of Mother Brain, Old Bird remaining silent to avoid giving an air of bias. "We will not abandon her to the fates. We will give her the blood of our kind and the raiments of war. Then teach her in our ways, so that she may learn of the importance of justice, of equality, and freedom. So that she may help watch over the cosmos and do her part to guide it towards the Utopian path." Samus felt warm at those words, loved, wanted, desired...she hoped people like her and Old Brid could watch over her.

Mother Brain seemed almost offended at the proposal, her psychic voice becoming rancorous and unpleasant. "-You have rejected my overtures to do the same for the great masses of this underdeveloped species. Why is this girl so important to you? We need armies, not lone agents. This deviation from your prior arguments is irrational, born of emotional attachment to someone you admit to befriending. I strongly advise you deviate from this lest you endanger the great project.-" What was this great project the Chozo were so concerned about anyway? Samus furrowed her brows trying to understand, trying to make sense of it...hrmmmm...

Old Bird at last harrumphed to add his voice to the debate after a seeming eternity of silence. "The future of the cosmos must be in the hands of its people, those who create its wonders and shape it through their works. Not to those who would wish to dominate and control. We cannot entrust the future to those who would wish to bend it to a single design in the service of empire. We need warriors for justice, not soldiers for absolutism." Many of the surrounding Chozo nodded their heads in agreement and the wizened avian seemed quite pleased at the reception, his gaze briefly meeting the eyes of young Samus and making her feel so very...safe. He wanted her here, and would fight to ensure she would be here.

"-The dream of a cosmos without class, nation, or state is a design in and of itself. One that will require precise social engineering to achieve. The great masses are clay in the hands of circumstance. I will mould this circumstance and we will have achieved the peace we desire.-" The Elder Platinum Crest and young War Hawk visibly tensed at Mother Brain's words. They sounded dangerous, the words of an autocrat in the making. That fiery youth Iron Heart and the aging Star Strider seemed to join Grey Voice in agreement with Mother Brain, and Old Bird was already dreading the need for a long struggle session with them about where such lines of thinking lead to.

However, Mother Brain's tone changed again, seemingly more accepting now. "-I do not see the need for a frail, traumatised little girl in my designs. But if I am to be left without a choice in this regard, then we will ensure that this is done with as little complication as possible. Begin the transfusion as soon as possible. We have work to do.-"

_Later that day_

Samus dreamed as most do when they lay sleeping. Her dreams were vivid, real, stark. Far more solid than they had been in the past. Her mind slipped from the moorings of reality and gazed into the twisting causeways of destiny like a kaleidoscope of possibilities and certainties. She was awakening to something her soul could barely touch before. Her spiritual glow began to brighten and her head briefly felt like it was rushing to no place in particular as she pulled back. Even most Chozo were advised to not try to stare at the whole of the causeways of time lest they pass out from overload.

But she saw echoes of the past flashing by her mind's eye. The ethereal, ghostly figures of those whose threads entwined with hers only to burn out were fading. What happened to most species after their deaths was a mystery for the ages, one that had busied the minds of countless psions and mystics and those scientists given to explore the more metaphysical. But she could see burned away strands tapering off into oblivion. The faded spectres of the past flickering as these ghosts grew further from the present every ssecond.

She saw the shapes of Rodney and Virginia, and wanted to rush towards them. "Mama! Papa!" She shouted, but the ghosts were consigned to the fire when she tried to reach for them, the mighty purple cable of another's overwhelming influence on possibility blocking her out. It was a cable shrouded in flame, angry and hot. She briefly looked towards it and saw the dreadful purple pterosaur like head full of sharpened teeth with tongues of fire licking forth from his mouth. His cable had been hacked into, dug into and choked by the final loop that her parents' made, but it was snaking its way out, growing stronger.

She knew instinctually that meant that he was still alive. He was greatly injured yes, but it would take more than being caught in the blast wave of his dying ship to end his malignant influence over her destiny. She looked to her own path, always a dangerous gamble for any user of the Distant Sight. To her horror she saw that purple thread entangling with hers again and again and again. He was inescapable. He was _everywhere_. She saw other coils threading from hers, a blackened version of her own that crackled with electicity, that of a green brute, the strands of many chozo, and then...a blue strand shooting across time and space.

She felt many of the pathways withering upon her direct observance; weaker possibilities dying as the simple fact of knowing of them in any capacity made them impossible. She almost got lost observing all that she could be and all that she was, but a tall figure in a red helmet stopped her; the ghostly form at the crux of what seemed like every cable in existence. She raised her left hand, the right encased in a green weapon, and touched her head to calm her. She looked into the Y like visor of the figure and her eyes opened with recognition as she saw noble blue eyes behind them.

And with that, she found herself awake in an unfamiliar bed. She wasn't sure how much time had passed, but she felt different now. She wasn't hungry anymore for one thing, and when she saw a small insect buzz past her she could see each and every one of its wingbeats clear as day, her ears easily making out the individual twitches of the insect's movements and even the sound of its heartbeat. She focused on it, and all other noise seemed to dull, and her hands moved to cup it. The agile insect not even having the time to adjust course before her hands had enclosed it and brought it towards her face. She looked at the insect, which wearily started to twitch back to activity after having been startled by something that it saw as little more than a blur.

So that's what they did with her then?

_She liked it._

_Cragimoch, Ensryn Nebula, Pinwheel Galaxy_

Spire was tired, aware of his every creak in his old body as he gave a fornlorn look out the window of his ship and watched the ghostly dance of a spinning pulsar, focusing on the rhythmic beat of the stellar corpse. He had seen sights like this thousands of times across his long career, but now all he wanted to do was sit in silence and grieve. He had only known the Skjoldrs for a few months yet he felt like his silicate furnace had been torn from its chest and crushed. The people on the planet had been nothing but kind to him and welcomed him as a friend, family even. For a moment his long mission even felt like he had found a place to call his own. But now for the second time in his centuries long life he had woken up to found himself alone.

Not alone, not quite he reminded himself as the tear stained face of Arne shuffled towards him, sniffling as he rubbed a synth-cloth on his face and looked up to Spire, the cuts and bruises he had self inflicted on his hands having been treated already. Spire traditionally preferred temperatures well past what a human like him could have survived, but for his sake he kept things considerably balmier. Why was he so set on sacrificing his time and energy to keep this child and his pets alive? Regret? Loss? A sense of failure and a need to make up for it? He had no idea how to raise a human child. He just followed what information he could pry out of the ComNet; even letting him use facilities meant for carbon based guests to make sure he stayed clean. But he couldn't offer the kid what he needed.

Arne had listlessly gone through his daily routine for a while now, modified for sharing the ship with Spire. He had no other idea of what to do. Clean himself, eat, keep busy, learn something...he was just going on automatic now. His mind was not in the space it needed to be to deviate, and Spire's attempts to modify it were foiled by his own uncertainty of what to do with such a damaged mind. Did he firmly but fairly steer him onto a new life's course? Did he gently ease him into a new routine? Did he try to take over where his parents left off? He had no idea. Arne for his part latched onto him, frequently hugging around his leg like he did with his own parents. Such affection helped provide him with an anchor, and Spire was warm anyway, and he liked warm things.

Warm meant affection, warm meant care, warm meant _safe_. Hot meant fire, hot meant destruction, hot meant _fear_. Cold was the worst of all, cold meant being chased, cold meant monsters, cold meant _loss_. He flinched every time he felt a temperature drop, and he became upset whenever that was paired with anything sinuous that came in threes. Now though, he had woken himself from his short stay in bed, waddling towards Spire with those pained eyes. He was still upset, and nothing that had been done so far was giving him more than minute amounts of peace and solace.

"Spire...are mom and dad coming back?" He wheezed. His voice was hoarse and weak. The finality of death was something he refused to acknowledge. Perhaps he didn't understand it, perhaps he did but didn't want to accept it. Whatever the case he had asked him this question repeatedly ever since he had recovered enough of his senses to reapply his sense of curiosity. He reached a hand out, letting Hugin pech onto his arm so he could pet the feathery bird, leaning in to listen to the bird speak to him. What words were shared was something Spire was not privy to, but it gave him time to think of an answer. _What should I say_ , he thought? Did he need to hear the truth in all of its cold and lonely agony, or should he delay the emotional surgery of acceptance with a lie? This very dilemma had prevented him from answering the question each prior time it had been asked, and he was running out of excuses.

Better now than never, he said. The words were heavy in his body, like they were made of lead. He didn't want to speak them, nobody should ever have to speak words like this to a toddler. But he had to. For both his and Arne's sake. He couldn't string him along on a false hope, that wouldn't be fair to anyone.

"No Arne...they're gone forever." He said sadly.

"...D-don't they love me?" He whimpered. _Oh by the Blaze no_ , he thought. No no no, he couldn't have him going down this road of thinking. His mind raced with alarm as he racked his thinking cells together to conjure a means of pulling the last Skjoldr out of the dark path of blaming himself. His youth was already destroyed in an afternoon, he didn't need to add victim blaming on top of that.

 _Gentle now, gentle_ he thought to himself. "They do, they always have. But they're dead. They've gone to a sleep they'll never wake up from. The monster put them in it, but they never stopped caring for you. They did it so you could still be here." He said, only for his eyes to widen as Arne's lips began to quiver and the sniffling started to intensify.

Arne's eyes started to shine with tears once again and Spire's furnace felt like it cooled on the spot. Arne started crying again, louder than ever and Spire hadn't the foggiest idea of what to give him to make him stop. The sounds of his wailing made the last Diamont feel so worthless. What good was he if he couldn't comfort a crying child? Hands strong enough to crush the glacis plate of a tank with a squeeze, but too hard to offer solace.

His musings however, were interrupted by space exploding apart as all seven kilometers of the Caesarian Lance simply teleported in front of the Cragimoch in an eerie green burst of energy. The prong winged battlecruiser strobed with many colours, cycling through weapons before it normalised to primarily blue and grey. Shaped somewhat like a forward swept winged tear drop with jutting vertical mandibles, the craft interposed itself between the Cragimoch and the Pulsar, its little lights now glowing a steady, consistent colour. He got no sense of benevolence or peace like he got from Chozo ships, simply a cold and unpleasant disdain as if he should feel lucky that the warship hadn't simply struck him from the records of existence.

His ship was enveloped shortly afterwards, space crumpling and spitting him out into the hold of the warship as it teleported once again; having claimed the only thing of interest in this system to its master.

_Processing Room of the Caesarian Lance_

Their new surroundings were cold and unfamiliar. Curved organic looking metallic stylizations were carved into the spacious hemispherical room. How big it was was difficult to say, but Spire wouldn't be surprised if masters of spacetime manipulation such as the Alimbics hadn't found a way to make this vessel larger on the inside with one of their stronghold voids. Certainly this place felt larger than it had any right to be. Pillars atop which upside down Alimbics floated, seemingly headless and armless, were placed in a pattern designed to the inscurtable sensibilities of Alimbic mathematical aesthetics. The lighting changed from a rather hostile orange to a more clinical white, illuminating the grey and tan interior and making the grey form of Zurvduat more obvious.

The Knight-General of the ship and the de facto master of the until recently extinguished species loomed so tall over the room atop a pillar above any of the others, his council assembled below him while his monocular gaze almost seemed to bore into Spire's ship as he and the other occupants exited. Walkways materialised into being as they stepped out of the descent capsule of the Cragimoch, and the dormant alimbics each flipped around and extended their limbs and head, the extending appendages seeming to twist out of nonexistence and allowing the ancient insectoids to stare at their guests. Unlike receptions he had gotten from places such as Zebes, this felt condescending. Spire could feel them judging him and the child.

Geri and Freiki pushed Arne towards the Mesa upon which the council of seven awaited him before Zurvduat focused his gaze directly upon him and bade him to stop to let the child approach alone. Another, singularly dismissive command was also sent to the corvids, prompting them to halt their flapping and instead perch themselves on Spire's body while Arne was presented towards the alimbics. Almost like a prize at an auction, with the comparison being deeped as the floor he was standing on sectioned off a circular space and lifted him before the Alimbics for analysis.

"-Arne Skjoldr, last of your world. We have conferred with one another and determined that you will serve our purposes well. We proclaim you our Neophyte, and label you our Primoris. Rejoice then, for from the ashes of your emmiseration a fresh glory may arise.-"

Zurvduat's voice was dry and demanding, a metallic telepathic vise that seemed almost like a matter of fact recollection of a manual or textbook. There was no joviality or emotional inflection, simply a statement of fact. There was no veiled menace or warning for disobedience. Disobedience was impossible, they asked and it would be so. Such was the way of the masters of the Tetrarchy.

"But mom and da-" He was not allowed to finish.

"-Are dead, they paid the price of soldiery and were consumed by the conflict they sought to wage, as was always inevitable. Do you seek justice for the slain, Primoris?-" Osith said, his more frigid voice making Arne recoil. He didn't like the cold and that awful word made him start to tear up again. No they weren't gone they were just...away...he didn't want them to be gone. He needed them.

"I want to go home! I want my friends!"

"-They are all dead, this is your home now, Primoris.-" Urim said, not interested in Arne's demands or his fear.

"-We will be your friends Arne.-" Elmorni said sweetly, the boy's hopeful eyes flicking towards her and a meek smile coming from him as he held his toy dinosaur a little closer to him and focused on her. He seemed hopeful, and his sniffling reduced in frequency and volume.

"-Spire cannot be expected to raise you, and you are a target now; you will not be safe in any human adoptive family. Only we can protect you from those who would seek your silence.-" Mortirk said, laying a hand across his chest in sympathy. Arne's gaze was devoid of understanding, they were speaking to him of concepts his mind was not yet ready to grasp beyond the sense of danger if he said no. He did what he could, and nodded with a sputtering "uh-huh" coming from him.

"-You are frail now, but we will reforge you in steel and craft from your iron a peerless warrior. You will become what this universe needs; the vanguard of a return to the age of peace.-" Deglos said, raising her arms skywards and conjuring a psychic light in the shape of the symbol of the Tetrarch Order that the Alimbics had forged, a stylised representation of an Alimbic head bearing the crossed Y symbol of the Imperial Peace that the ancients had forged long ago in the ashes of the old war. A peace built on dominance and control. No room for the Chozo's attempts to forge fraternity and mutual understanding as far as Spire remembered.

"-We will give you shelter and space to grow. Not just into someone healthy, but someone strong. You will right the wrongs of the past, and you will ensure the commonwealth of all intelligent beings.-" Ygrak said, her voice melodious and gentle.

"He's literally a toddler, are you that desperate for soldiers? He needs a family, not war training!" Spire folded his arms and looked up at the Alimbics as what seemed to be every Alimbic room turned their heads towards him, casting a cold and unflinching judgement upon him that made him suddenly feel very small and exposed. One of the most feared and revered hunters in the universe and here he was, unable to face this batch of insects looking down on him as if he were well...a pile of rocks who had spoken out of turn.

Zurvduat's imperious telepathic voice entered into Spire's mind and stayed there like freshly remembered orders. "-The Imperial Peace must exist. This universe has fallen to chaos in our absence, yet we are too few in number to impose our order on creation. We will alleviate that in time, but these humans have the psychic talent to be given the gift of our sacred helix.-"

"-And from them we can raise a new generation of soldiers. Enforcers of peace who may cut a swathe through the destruction and darkness that has come to infest the garden of civilization. The Primoris has nowhere else to go, no one else to offer him succor; but we will welcome him to our ranks and call him our own.-" He continued, gesturing towards Arne to make him walk over. Arne hesitated, he wasn't sure...he was reluctant to trust the Alimbic, but Elmorni offered her own hand and he smiled; walking over without concern towards her. Zurvduat briefly pulsed with concealed insult, but regained his composure as Arne hugged at Elmorni's knee.

"C-can they come?" He asked, looking over at his ravens and sighing gently when he got a nod of affirmation while Elmorni picked him up and lifted him to such a great height to be eye level with her. She hummed to him and swept some of his hair away from his eyes. A hand of hers reached out, and the Ravens seemed to understand the gesture with wingbeats swiftly taking them to their new perch. Geri and Freiki of course, returned to Zurvduat's side and sat after leaping to their place next to him.

"-You may leave now Spire. Though be assured that we wll likely have business in the future.-" Zurvduat said.

"You can bet that I'm going to be checking in regularly." Spire snorted.

"-Is that a threat?-" Osith asked.

"Maybe it is, maybe it's not. But you'd better do right by him." He said as he stomped back towards his ship, his mood darkened by the brief meeting.

_Biological Reconstruction Chamber, Caesarian Lance_

"-His physiology is enhanced from the baseline like virtually all humans, but far too weak to withstand the training we will put him through.-" Ygrak said, the red Alimbic hovering close by to Elmorni. She spoke frankly to her mate, concern heavy in her psychic voice.

Elmorni nodded, Zurvduat's plans were...ambitious to say the least. Luckily, Arne was very young, the vast majority of his growth had yet to occur. An older subject, even an adult was still viable; but at his age they could painlessly sculpt out virtually the entire roadmap of his physical development. His height, bodytype, they could even change most of his features if they wanted to, though looking at him floating within the tank in a fetal position she decided that altering such petty phenotypic details as colouration wouldn't be necessary.

"-We will need to make him tall, above the average for his species. Such will make traversing our facilities easier. He should be powerful but lithe and fast. Speed matters more than raw power, and even then we can infuse into his body the strength of a legion of his kind. We will purge fatigue and whatever remaining vulnerabilities to sickness modern geneticists have not conquered, he will serve our ends until the last stars die if need be. We will need to encode into his Helix our noble gift of esoterica and the mental art. Humanity's psionic potential has yet to be truly realised, their appreciation for the arcane barely extant. We will change that, the energies his mind and soul can conjure will sustain him more fully than mere chemical metabolisms ever will, and soon he will be able to stand proud as our sword to cleave chaos and disruption from this existence. From the clay of human weakness we shall forge a proper Knight of the Tetrarchy. The Primoris of our new cohorts who shall deliver this universe back to the proper order.-" Zurvduat had said at the commissioning of this project. Elmorni for her part simply crunched the request down to "make him an Alimbic in human skin". It had the same overall meaning without the need for a long winded speech.

"-Do you think it will be worth it?-" Elmorni asked.

Ygrak paused as she thought.

"-We are stealing his future from him and binding it to ours. But the whole of our species would now struggle to populate a single city. We do not have a choice. We must go through with the procedure. If it's not him, it will be someone else. And he has no one.-" She said, nodding her neckless floating head to Elmorni.

Elmorni looked at the child and then back to her lover as the two laid one of their hands against the other.

"-I will make sure that he never grows too distant from his origins. Whatever Zurvduat commands, he will always have a connection to home.-" She said.

Ygrak shook her head, no this didn't feel right. "-Is it fair to let him know of a place so riven with destruction? He is young, he could forget naturally; we wouldn't even have to modify his memories.-"

"-He has a right to know where he is from. We are his caretakers, it is not our place to decide whose memory he aligns with. It will simply be our task to ensure that the memories we give him in his formative years will be as strongly cherished as the ones from his parents in his infancy.-" She said.

She looked at her charge. His thoughts were full of cold, wintery death. He saw the three headed one rising from a volcano that spat forth only snow and arctic frost, standing on their hind hooves, wings spread wide and heads pointed high as they let loose their tyrant's scream; the corpses of millions surrounding their feet while they stood in partly frozen blood. She could hear the sound of a high pitched roar with bell like trilling in its reverb in his mind. A nightmare, far too intense for him to handle. Far too vivid, far too real. He was in a loop, reliving the helplessness of watching everyone die without being able to do anything about it once again.

Elmorni touched the sides of the tank and willed him to think of happier memories, strands of pleasantries worming their way into the young boy's thoughts to create new images in his mind. Images of belonging, of welcoming, of being loved and accepted by his new family. She sent him sensations of warm, red emotion, banishing the arctic cold of Viper's golden fur and glacier blue eyes with images of a pleasant field of red grass and pleasant swaying trees. The plains of Oriomak where she was born and where she was raised from creche to service. She showed him how he could be part of this to, sending him visions of being part of this, accepted and cared for, no longer alone and afraid. He calmed, his breathing normalised and Elmorni was pleased, he would be alright in the end, she was sure of it.

Zurvduat would likely...contradict these messages, but in time she hoped that he would see him as a son, and not just a tool.


	10. Forlorn: Training (AS & SA)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shattered souls are reforged into noble warriors.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Genesis will be split into three portions. Genesis, Forlorn, and Reborn.

**Samus**

_Crateria, Zebes, FS-176, Zokunai Nebula, Whirlpool Galaxy_

Samus stood resplendent in her yellow and red armour, her blue eyes staring wistfully out at the word through the Y-shaped blue visor she wore. Data gathered by her suit fed as naturally into her mind as the input delivered to her by her natural senses. Mind and armour were as one as she felt the breeze over her second skin. The windswept fields of Zebes stretched out for what seemed to be forever. The thought that this planet was just one of many in a vast, endless universe seemed so absurd to her when just this one world seemed so large.

Having recently turned twelve, Samus knew that she was preparing to embark on a journey perhaps more important than any before. She looked up at the sky, seeing the stars and setting her visor to zoom in as far as light would allow and then enhancing it further with the otherwordly powers of her armour. The twinkling lights became vivid images of burning orbs in the sky, some partly occluded by what she concluded were planets or other large objects.

Faint nebula painted themselves into beautiful colours, the twinkling of impossibly distant objects all the more stark as she resolved that one day; she would see everything the universe had to offer. No sight would be left unrecorded, no history left to lie in the dust, no voice crying out in pain left uncomforted. But she sensed through her otherworldly vision that her target was moving.

She focused her gaze downward and saw the flea sized target in motion more than a thousand of her body lengths away, having emerged from its burrow to flea through the night. She had resolved to take care of the target practise drone without disturbing the wildlife, and so resolved to wait until the best opportunity had presented herself.

She raised her green arm cannon and locked her arm, the cannon’s highlight colour changing to red as she zoomed in. She anticipated the direction of its next movement as it began to crack its wings faster then sound to make its movements as erratic as possible and squeezed off a shot. A crimson lance of laser light shot straight out of her cannon across the whole distance and struck the hopping machine at the apex of its leap just at the right angle to avoid hitting the ground, sailing into the night sky harmlessly.

She excitedly pumped her arm cannon in celebration. She definitely preferred to mix it up close, but this was her longest range success on a target of that size yet. She jumped down the mesa and fell a kilometer, landing lightly on her feet and starting to move to the next training area. She leaped into the air to avoid disturbing the fauna and flora too much, her movement silent as she outpaced her own sound.

She launched a grapple tether out and used it to swing around a Mesa, excitedly shouting as she felt the rush of the air all around her. Her armour fed her the necessary analysis of the air vibrations to give her the simulation of normal hearing at these speeds, allowing her to hear what was ahead of her as well as to the sides and behind her, and the whistling and thunderclap were akin to music to her.

She shot out again, firing the tether at a distant platform to pull herself like a coment to the mountainous outcropping, spinning herself to get her feet into position before impact. She carefully buckled her legs under the impact and shot out again, spinning herself to face the ground before curling into the morph ball. Her sight drew beyond her body as her form compacted into the sphere, the armour becoming twin hemisphers around a luminous sphere of energy as she skipped across the ground and rolled up a ramp.

She unfurled and saw about thirty mechanical targets. She estimated she had about a tenth of a second before hitting the ground, and in half that time she had put a power beam shot into each of their heads; landing on the ground as they all fell in unison. She stood up and checked each of her angles. A flight of mechanical skrees, shaped like flying tongs with teeth; span at her faster than bullets.

She jumped over the first one zipping at her, her arm cannon clicking and expanding into missile configuration to obliterate the first one with a hypersonic warhead that kept its detonation compact enough to avoid unnecessary damage. The second skree followed suit, as did the third and fourth before she landed back on the ground.

The fifth got another surprise as her left gauntlet extended a sharpened blade from the wrist and swung that in a wide orange sweep as the blade covered itself in coruscating energy, bisecting the machine after puncturing its shielding as effortlessly as when she dug a knife into some of her favoured molten spreads.

She latched onto one with a grapple beam fired from the underside of her left gauntlet and swung it around to smash into a tankdrone that emerged from a teleporter, the Skree exploding on contact with a brilliant blue fireball while she jumped to her next target. Firing off the boosts as she rotated herself downward, blue jets on her armour pushing her to her foe; she raised her leg for a metal shattering axe kick.

Her boot heel cracked through shielding that could have withstood her missile and with a single power beam shot, she weakened the armour enough to smash her other foot through the head of the tankdrone, crushing the ladybug like machine into the ground in dozens of pieces.

She was excited, and her heartbeat fluttered with anticipation. She loved this, the rush, the energy, overcoming difficult obstacles and making safe what was once dangerous. This was what she lived for and she never wanted it to stop.

She dropped down with a sweep kick, her leg surrounded by a comet of burning air as she smashed a number of tripedal attack drones off their feet. Grabbing the nearest one, she swept it around her while her enemies had yet to leave the ground before she pushed herself out of her circular kick, smashing the machine in her hands to splinters and stopping the rest from regaining her bearings.

And with a rapid volley of missiles she had taken out each remaining machine. She paused and analysed the area for more threats until that warning sense kicked in again. She flipped out of the area to avoid a missile, but the secondary explosion clipped her and cost her some energy as the detonation encased itself in an invisible barrier that concentrated the force and then shaped it into a tendril like fireball.

She ducked down, but a second worm missile exploded behind her, then a third and a fourth and a fifth. The cluster detonations and the stabbing tendril blasts tried to fence her in, as did a number of Spidery Subterranean attack drones. Taking a few too many hits from next to impossible to avoid entrapment for her liking, she curled into the morph ball once more.

This time she had charged up her power beam to release a wide spread of bombs in all directions to clear out the area, reversing the direction of the spring ball to avoid bouncing from the bomb drops as she burrowed into the ground. Dirt geysered around her and she dropped down into a cavern. She hit the ground and sensed something below her, immediately dropping three bombs to clear out the threat before she uncurled.

The next machine threw itself at her, arms spread to try and entrap her. She smashed it with her cannon like a mace, knocking it up so that a stab from her power blade would bisect it from the momentum, her eyes picking up a dozen more targets. She charged her next missile shot and let the mass of skitter drones be caught in the blast, stunning them as their shields burst open before the second missile impacted and eradicated the whole lot.

Too easy she thought. She needed more of a challenge. She scanned around looking for a greater test to overcome. But with her eyes already adjusted to the darkness in the cavern, with chemical synthesizing plants drinking from Zebes’ rich soil and emitting faint light amidst the faintly blue rocks, she could see the silhouette of the obstacle course’s final challenge. A thundering machine stalked forward on seemingly undersized Spidery legs, claws pulling it forward while a cyclopean optic stared out at the world, glowing red as jaw of life like digits on its two enormous hands splayed their fingers with each step it made in this “all hands on deck” stance.

Tan in colour with brassy digits and red highlights, the machine swivelled its ball like eye towards Samus as fully extended her right arm and started charging a shot within her arm cannon and gave a satisfied smile. “Okay then, let’s go.” She said, relishing in the thought of the action that was to come shortly. Her body felt electrified at the prospect of a worthy challenge, her mind already puzzling over the scan data she had received. The Central Eye and the innards were the weakness, and her foe could seek to best her with a combination of raw strength, cutting beams, and howling hypersonic cyclones able to shred through stone.

And just on cue, she felt that electric jolt and a short, sharp warning from a possible future. She smirked beneath her helmet as she quickly prepared to jump out of the way. The Tornagot’s radial claws began to spin up faster and faster to create gouts of wind in her direction, cyclones lashing like continually exploding bombs through the stone behind her, carving out tunnels and blowing out endless tons of sand and dirt that fountained out of the gashes sliced into the rock. Too late for the Tornegot however, as she had already jumped to the ceiling with her legs braced to jump again.

She figured that the machine was unlikely to be vulnerable to her missiles while the fans were operating at such power, so she fired off the grapple beam and pulled herself onto the Machine’s head to release a charged burst of her power beam. The somewhat orange wash of energy made the machine recoil as she curled into morph ball mode and left a spread of exploding spheres of energy that burst in combination with a heavy bass note..

As it recoiled, she actictivated the atomic grips of her spider ball to roll around its body, continually dropping bombs with a stattaco of pulsing blasts that made the thing buck with each hit, wigging and wagging around its exterior to avoid its grasping claws until it “hatched” its own explosive energy sphere. Sensing danger from the shimmering blue bomb orb, she launched herself skywards with the spring ball and uncurled into humanoid form once more.

A grapple beam lash was released from her left hand and she swung herself in a full circle over the behemoth’s head, avoiding the cutting laser it sought to catch her with before she leaped onto its neck joint. A series of missiles were released and the blade was shoved into a vulnerable looking joint, sparking against its shields and making the juggernaut snarl with apparent frustration before it started to rotate.

She jumped off of the spinning torso as it started to sweep around the room with its killing wind, catching her in some of the cyclones as they widened and slammed her into the wall with enough force to spiderweb cracks through it. She growled before she started to push against the wind and then compacted into her morph ball form. Her body wrapped in orange light before it transformed into the little sphere that glowed temporarily with the spider-ball to advance through the wind.

Firing off her boost ball to launch her forwards and combining it with the speed booster to shroud her in a red aura to give herself as much momentum as possible, she swung her arm blade upwards to cause the machine’s shielding to spark to life in the midst of the collision. The hypersonic swing splintered through the machine’s shielding and allowed her to swing her arm cannon up to smack away one of its limbs and leave it open for a rapid fire barrage of her missiles, an orchestra of rocket fire crescendoed with a green tipped super missile that caused the whole of the area to shake as if an earthquake had rolled through.

As she jumped to avoid its primary cutting laser, it tried to catch her with an arm that she dodged skillfully, pulling out of the way, but the secondary beams caught her briefly; pushing her back to take the swatting second limb’s back hand with enough force to knock her to the ground. Sensing an opportunity its limbs began to compact and the machine started to lean forwards before it seemingly shrank.

Ah right, it could compact itself into a ball form too she reminded herself as it began to glimmer with building up energy, forcing her to jump up and charge up somewhat more extreme firepower. Stacking the ice beam onto her repertoire of weapons, she allowed the Tornegot to slam into the wall and partly collapse some of the cavern upon itself with its railgun like impact, making sure she wasn’t touching the jostling ground while her cannon hummed with the negative energy it was conjuring.

She waited for it to emerge and let loose as soon as she caught the silhouette emerging from its pile of rubble. Before it could start spinning its claws, she had released a fully charged shot. “Gotcha.” She said with a smirk as the machine was engulfed in a thick layer of ice from solidifying air, sparkling and white, then bombarded it even further, shot after shot to immobilise every limb and twitching piece of machinery ever deeper in a prison of ice. Before it could try to break free, she had grabbed onto it with her left hand grapple beam and begun to swing it.

“Okay, I’ve got this.” She said to herself as she made a pair of rotations, slamming it through multiple cavern walls and pillars as the more than a thousand tonne industrial machine let loose a plaintive beep lost in the noise of its sonic boom before she released and let the thing fly straight through the ceiling. Jumping through the fields of collapsing debris, letting them shatter against her shielding harmlessly and bursting through even a house sized boulder with a leap; she fired another charged shot to

Sensing weakness, she had burst fired three super missiles that screamed out of the cannon so fast a blink would cause one to miss it, aimed directly for the frozen head of the machine. The already frost compromised structure of the machine could not survive such an insult and the machine’s construction crumbled under the pressure. She shouted out a cheer, gleeful at the sight of the machine’s head exploding into pieces as she descended rapidly towards the ground. She hit the ground lightly, while her foe crashed down with a heavy clatter in a rain of parts.

She stood up and removed her helmet, letting it stick to the grip of the fingers of her gauntlet and pulling it free, exposing blonde hair she kept in a tomboyish pony tail to keep the golden tresses that she grew to about a finger length past her collar in place. She could have simply dismissed it, but she felt like striking a pose as the Chozo teleported before her, already forewarned of their coming. She blinked and saw the gathered ancients all directly in front of her arranged in a crescent formation, along with Mother Brain’s oculi drones made in imitation of her singular cyclopean eye hanging off to the sides of the council of elders.

Horath-Baast, the young War Hawk bowed her head in respect, her backwards swept head crest tilting as she made the gesture of respect to the young miss Aran. “You have performed excellently Hatchling. Though room for improvement of course remains, you have exceeded all that could be expected of you so soon into such a difficult task. Come, celebrate with us please.” She said, stretching a hand towards her in welcome.

“Do you really mean it? I did well?” She said, her eyes flashing with curiosity. She’d taken a number of hits when the amount of fire she was taking was too much for even her prescient hyper-agility to handle. She should have known to avoid even being in those fields of fire at all beforehand. She felt a request to access her state of mind, a probing inquiry made at the back of her thoughts.

With her Chozo blood virtually no psychic or mystic in the universe could read her barest emotion without her permission; nevermind move her with telekinetics or twist her with other more esoteric powers. But so much of Chozo conversation was carried on in higher planes of thought, with signals perceivable only through sixth and seventh senses that she was virtually obliged to offer access more times than not.

His psychic voice was calm, gentle and warm. She always felt validated, “-You are doubting yourself too much, Hatchling. You are stronger than you know, and are able to accomplish more than you can imagine now.-” She thought of his hand running through her hair, sitting in a warm field as he regaled her of pleasant stories amidst their family. All the Chozo gathered around and sharing the tales of great heroes and fantastical adventures. She smiled beatifically, and nodded at him.

Old Bird saw visions of her playing with him in the fields, her excited energy seemingly boundless as they tumbled around Zebes. The moons lit sky above shimmered with stars and glowing creatures that danced in the air above. Samus’ warmer memories of him. “-I understand, Old-Bird.-” She replied. She was gentle, loving, adoring even.

Her thoughts now drifted to those of all her learning experiences with him, how he’d guide her steadily at her own pace, letting her learn through doing. “-Do not worry too much about the small mistakes, instead concern yourself with how you can do better in the future with the lessons of the past. If you agonise over every possible error; present and possible; you will be forever trapped in the moment.-” He said, his mental voice gentle as the breeze as he released her from the conversation, his voice clearing from her mind all at once.

“Your performance improves remarkably every day. Soon there will be nothing left to teach you of physical combat. And your skill in the physical sciences and the arts are equally impressive. Though your social graces still have room to grow.” Grey Voice said, immediately getting a glare from Samus as her smile disappeared in the time it takes for someone to snap their fingers.

Her right brow skyrocketed while her left kinked downwards in an expression best described as ‘curious but furious’. “Excuse me? Did I mishear you?” She said, clearly not pleased with his choice of words.

She paused herself shortly afterwards though, realising her outburst was likely an example of what he was referring to. “Okay maybe you do have a point...but you didn’t have to say it like that! Don’t be a jerk!” She said, her voice snappy and pitched up slightly to get his attention and to let him know exactly how she was feeling.

“Please forgive Somek-Ka, he is merely busying himself with preparing for the next phase of your training.” Isa-Hesh said, August Wing offering a small bow of apology to mollify Samus. She flashed a little smile and voiced her apologies for lashing out.

She was curious though… “What’s this next phase of training?” She asked, tilting her head in curiosity, her quirked eyebrow returning though her expression was considerably more gentle now.

“We will need to start preparing you for interaction with the greater universe. Learn to deal with people and their problems, to observe systems and find solutions, and to solidify your connections to your birth species. Once that is done, we will teach you to master your sixth and seventh senses.” The wizened Platinum crest said, conjuring an image of galaxies drifting through the universe in his outstretched left hand. People, planets, and stars came into view and that sense of wonder asserted itself in full in her once more.

“...I’ll be leaving Zebes?” She said.

“-Though I personally do not believe this phase of training overly necessary, it has been deemed necessary to complete your passage to the ranks of adulthood.-” Mother Brain’s psychic voice was as unpleasant as ever and Samus gave an unimpressed look at yet more of the A.I’s incessant criticisms.

“-For now however, I shall stand by and allow you to rush out to seek your adventure, however much improvement you ne-” Samus stopped listening to Mother Brain right about then, she looked back to Old Bird, waiting for him to confirm what the others were saying.

“For some time, but you will always be welcome in your home.” He said, offering her a small bow.

She positively beamed at the thought, looking back up at the night sky and imagining herself at all those strange worlds she had seen earlier, every planet she had read about, every locale she had fantasised about. She reached her hand towards the sky and imagined the stars in her hands, then she closed her hand into a fist, brought it to her chest and turned towards her family.

“I can’t wait.” She said.

**Sylux**

_Eremak Jungles, Sentus Primaris, Sentus, Sentinel Verge, Tetra Galaxy_

Ä humanoid figure in two tone blue armour; cyan around the chest and head, a stark azure everywhere else with a black flexible soft layer between the joints with a bright red optic and a dark purple arm cannon stood in a jungle. He was moving constantly, never standing still. His motions were economical, swift, and deliberate; Arne was well aware that his teachers disapproved of unnecessary flourish.

He snatched a missle shot in his direction out of the sky, the fingers of his gauntlet curling around the haft of the projectile and a rotation of his body turning the hypersonic warhead back to its sender with a good toss. The monocular eye piece at the centre of the somewhat tear drop shaped helmet glowed red as the triple grey crest flexed downward, the focus of the eyes of the human child beneath drawn squarely on the web of projectiles thrown his way.

He danced around them, his legs taking him faster than sound itself as he skipped from one point to another. He took stock of his targets and raised his weapon, his cannon’’s combi-barrel spinning together and sputtering out an ovoid burst of potent orange energy. Six shots in total.The grey psycho-bit, shaped much like his helmet dropped to the ground, the spinward kick of his shots taking its flight from it. Follow up bursts cut through the drones, two dozen disabled in the span of an eyeblink.

The loud rumbling of metallic treads warned him of incoming foes. The heavy nuclear pulse of battlehammers; his helmet’s vibro-sensors detecting the jostled atoms to give him auditory warning even at supersonic speeds; gave him leave to take to the air again. Just before a series of red laser pulses fired from pop out turrets could catch him.

With a spin brought from a kick he swung around to slam a Psycho-bit out of the air and into the nearest wall hard enough to break open part of a cliff face, he dodged over the charged plasmoid bursts of the man sized bipedal guardian drones while he was airborne. Running at him with chicken like legs, the lanky drones kept pace with him as he grabbed at a tree and swung around it in a whip cracking circle before firing off his back thrusters and releasing.

Blue tendrils of electricity riding neutrinos slipped from the cannon he wielded. The Shock Coil, his favoured subweapon. The self guided tendrils established the guidance streams of electricity that the neutrinos rode upon, following the electrons to strike into more standard particles of matter without ghosting through as they usually did. The impact quite simply pushed apart the targeted guardian’s shielding and then its very particulate structure in real time as he strafed around the target, ruptured molecules spewing forth ejecta as he threw himself to the ground beneath an electric volley of yellow projectiles.

He squeezed his shoulders and thought, his body collapsed into a new shape. Armour reconfigured and his flesh became energy. Shaped like an altered and compacted version of his torso, the psycho-sphere hovered forwards, compacting itself further to avoid incoming fire before contracting and flexing to release a psychoburst of mental energy that threw apart the surrounding foes to give him the space to unfurl.

His power to peer with the distant sight told him exactly where to move, grabbing an incoming Guardian leg as it snap kicked at him with sound barrier breaking force so that he could catch the machine with a charged power beam shot straight to the optic. Its attempts to avoid foiled by his prescience telling him exactly where to move himself to avoid efforts.

His shock coil fired off again, each foe targeted taking heavy damage at first only for the hungry coils to ramp up once they had latched on long enough, turning into a torrent of deadly particles that carved through even the heavier drones in a few moments from his perspective. A missile thrown his way prompted him to dodge. He could have taken the hit and have been fine, but he had to keep moving.

His psychic senses gave him a brief vision of something approaching. His eyes caught a shadow forming over him warned him of a descending foe, and he looked up to see a meteoricly descending crash pillar. Triangulating his response between what his flashes of distant sight told him, what his suit fed him, and what his natural senses informed him, he decided while it was avoidable; there was something else he could do.

The cylindrical quintiped machine hurled downwards with altered gravity, and he had an idea. The young boy raised his arm and braced against the impact, taking the jolt of a falling multi-tonne supersonic machine in stride, buckling just slightly before he spun the machine around in a circle to swat aside his other foes and then throw it into the assembly of guardians.

Most jumped or dashed out of the way, but he broke up their formation enough to let his shock coil reduce another to steaming ash before their withering barrage stitched deep holes in the ground and gouges in the natural geography. He ducked forward and rolled into the psychosphere before launching forwards and dropping a psychoburst, uncurling and parrying an attempted chicken kick from a guardian so that he could move it in the way of another’s missile.

He grunted and raised his cannon to fire another shot, but the machines all stopped moving suddenly. He reabsorbed the charged shot he was about to fire, lowering his cannon and looking to the side to see the Alimbics approaching him.

With a thought his helmet dissipated into blue light, exposing the fresh features of a now twelve year old Arne Skjoldr. Roughly cut white hair fell to just a bit above his shoulders, and his red eyes were bleary with boredom. He inhaled through his rather small nose, and wiped his left gauntlet on his pale skin. He wasn’t sweaty or tired, but the gesture gave him a bit of relief.

“-Disappointing. You were three thirteenths of a second too slow to ensure a flawless victory, wasted time means wasted effort.-” Zurvduat said, Arne letting his shoulders slump and issuing a tired sigh. He blinked a few times and looked at the ground, cheeks glowing red with embarrassment. He felt like an idiot and kicked at the rocks near his feet in frustration.

“I was going to win…” He said glumly.

“-Irrelevant, I do not require excellency; I require perfection. We will start again, Primoris.-”

“Why can’t you call me Arne, dad?” He said, looking up at Zurvduat who’s head snapped towards Arne at the utterance of that accursed word. He leaned in, everything seeming to go silent as his lanky body loomed ever closer to the boy and the glow of his singular eye became more intense. Arne flinched and brought up a hand, trying to hide his face from the Knight-General, shaking slightly.

“-I am not, and _never_ will be your father and you would do well to remember that, **Primoris**.-” The last word was said in such a chilling manner that Arne felt his heartbeat quicken. He wanted to hide, and the sight of Zurvduat’s hand rising made him cringe. His expression twisted into one of fright as he closed his eyes and waited for his judgement, counting internally.

He felt disgusted at not being able to retaliate, but Zurvduat controlled so much of his power. The second skin that normally made him feel invincible was a prison in his presence. But no blow came, and Arne relaxed slightly as Zurvduat went back to his standard height and position.

“-Now, we will restart the scenario, and you will cease your complaining. Am I understood?-”

“...Yes General…” Arne said quietly, letting his helmet rematerialise from the ether and laying his free hand on his arm cannon to prepare himself.

…

He slipped on the top of a fallen guardian as he tried to weave his body through at least fifty missiles screeching towards him from one direction, a hundred volt driver pulses from another, and six scorching laser beams from a third direction. He quickly caught his footing again and prepared to shoot his way out of the wall of electric yellow psycho-bits trying to catch him by surprise, but once again his suit and the machines were commanded to halt.

“-Begin again, we will not have you losing your footing on the field of battle.-” Arne groaned beneath his helmet the moment he heard Zurvduat’s psychic voice.

…

As he spun and jumped through a wall of weapons fire and attempted flying melee attackers from every direction, flipping and twisting his body to avoid hundreds of projectiles and dozens of attackers and carefully shooting out and those he could, he was clipped by a single laser and felt the skycutting beam burn his shielding briefly. He grunted and once again everything was made to stop while he landed on the ground flawlessly.

“-An unnecessary hit, be more aware of your surroundings. Begin again-” He clenched his fist and seethed internally. He gritted his teeth and exhaled, counting to ten and relaxing his fingers. Once he was ready he looked up and nodded.

…

He fired another shot, the Skystriker’s weapon armatures starting to glow before he raked across its hide with the writhing serpents of lightning from his shock coil. His armour hummed as it felt energy surge through it and his body. The helicopter sized machine swayed slightly, its reactor core finally starting to fail as he hammered it with three further strikes of his charged power beam, smoke and sparks carving itself from its hide.

He needed to finish this he reasoned. His cannon clicked and the vents to the side shivered into their opening position before the weapon hummed. Multiple missiles combined into one within and released, the hum turning into a keen and the warhead flying true. The enemy machine spiralled with this last injury straight into the ground, but the swarms of psycho-bits that had provided it escort all stopped at once before he could switch targets.

Confusion made itself known in his mind, but the voice of Zurvduat rose above his other thoughts. “-An ordinary missile would have sufficed. Do not waste your munitions. Begin again.-” Arne almost choked.

…

He punched the howling Crawlmech; sending the thousand tonne behemoth off of its feet and into a wall that it bowled through. Several more such walls collapsed at its movement as he pushed back with the momentum of his blow. He extended his legs for a devastating flip kick that smashed a multi-tone crash pillar into the earth, bedrock cracking and earth geysering into the air as he kicked off. But before he could target his next foes they all stopped moving again, the boy vocalising his frustration as he landed heavily.

“-What have I told you about unnecessary flourish Primoris? Begin again.-” He shook briefly as he clutched at his helmet and muttered to himself. Zurvduat’s telepathy could not pierce his psychic defenses; armour or not; nor could his other abilities, and Arne used this to think of some choice words for his “father”.

…

The shock coil sang again, eliminating another target while he zeroed in on his next foe. He extended the power blade from his left gauntlet and fired off the electric blue energy tether of the grapple beam from the lower attachment to pull a sniping Guardian towards him. A burst of two missiles to weaken its shielding followed by a quick stab to the eye should do it before he touched the ground.

The machine stopped and Arne felt his suit cease to obey him and he hit the ground head first. Grunting as he rolled onto his feet. He could have saved himself had the sudden sensation of having to move the armour under his own strength not kicked in. But he looked up and saw Zurvduat once again.

“-Keep the time you spend without your feet facing the ground to a minimum. Begin again.-” Arne glared at him through his helmet. He found a gesture on the ComNet that he thought Zurvduat would appreciate involving his middle digit but he bit his tongue and stood himself back up. What would it take to please him?

…

The Crawlmech was slammed into the ground with a grapple swing, arcing it over head and then smashing it into the earth with its underbelly exposed. Thunder and lighting coiled from his cannon to cause what damage he could, filling the air with the ozone stench of electrical energy before it broke free of its entombment and turned towards him. However he had already left a parting gift of charged missiles that would keep it busy as he flipped onto a psycho-bit.

He touched onto the drone and stabbed the power blade straight through the head as the pillar like Cretaphid spun around to release deadly bursts of cutting blue energy. Analyzing its movements, he pushed off and fired his power beam in carefully aimed bursts to neutralise each of the blue energy emitters, spinning to dodge around laser fire and then latching onto the cretaphid itself.

He kicked off it, steering his path in the air to let him take aim at the emitters on the other side as he flipped back onto the pillar with the blade extended, charging it with extra energy while a grapple tether from his arm cannon was fired off to pull him towards the cretaphid’s emerging diamond like power core. He yanked himself towards the core and made a cut through it before landing on the ground as it exploded behind him.

He pushed himself onto his feet, not looking at the explosion or even at the rising Crawlmech before he turned his cannon towards it and fired a crimson lance of energy from the gun; stabbing it through the optic and sending it back onto the ground.

He panted, from frustration more than anything. His body and suit could keep at this forever if needed, but he wanted to hear it from Zurvduat.

“-Adequate.-”

That word felt like someone had shot him. He felt so livid, so furious. He snapped.

“Why can’t you ever be happy!” He shouted, pointing accusingly at the Alimbic Knight-General who simply turned his floating head towards him; rotating it in a full circle before his body swivelled as it hovered. Arne panted in outrage, his expression twisted by raw, uncontrolled anger as he shook with fury.

Zurvduat seemed almost amused at Arne’s anger, like watching a toddler throw a fit. He even gave the equivalent of a snort, a sensation of dismissal and diminutization. “-Because you are excellent, but I need you to be perfect. You continually err and deny yourself perfection. You are so close to the cusp of actualisation yet you fall short of it every time. Such failure irks me.-”

“I HAVE BEEN DOING THIS FOR FIVE DAYS! THE SAME SCENARIO OVER AND OVER AND OVER!” Arne snapped, pointing at the wrecked Cretaphid and then at all the evidence of his constant exercise. Again, and again, without rest, pause, or even so much as a chance to sleep. His eyes strained behind his helmet.

“-And you have preformed adequately. We will begin again after your earned short rest..-” Zurvduat said, sending the psychic signal for the damaged machinery to begin repairs and for replacements to be sent out. Arne though almost choked. He dropped to the ground and exhaled harshly.

“Kkhhhh…..kkhhhhhhh.” He hissed, every harsh breath from him sounding like it was torturous to draw out. He clenched at the ground until he could feel something solid. He clenched at it until it broke into powder in his hands as he reached for his helmet and threw it off. It slammed on the ground with a crack as he pulled open his Zero suit hood, his red eyes spiderwebbed with blood vessels as he breathed in and out. He wanted to cry. But Zurvduat would be disappointed in him if he showed weakness.

He stabilised his breathing and pulled up his legs and sat down. His arms resting below the pronged shoulders of his armoursuit and his left hand threading through the rich black soil of the dirt. His sensitive hearing tuned in to the subtle sounds of nature and the little songs of small animals and his nostrils inhaled the scent of the wild. It seemed peaceful, and he had managed to avoid causing it any unnecessary damage, making sure none of his shots once struck any living wild creature or plant even by accident.

Could he at least be proud in that? Would Zurvduat at least let him have that victory?

“-Arne?-” The benevolent voice of Ygrak said. The boy looked up and turned his head to see his other mothers and father descending down from the sky after having warped inside. The Red, Yellow, and Blue forms of Ygrak, Mortirk, and Elmorni flanked him and he tried his best to look strong for them, giving them a weary smile.

“-Are you alright?-” Elmorni said, dropping down to his level and laying a hand on his shoulder while Deglos watched from a distance; Zurvduat busily conferring with Deglos and Osith in a circle. The triumvirate would likely remain busy for some time, and it was rarely wise to interrupt the three Knight-Generals who commanded the military forces of

“I did it...but all he could say was...Adequate. I can’t please him no matter how hard I try!” He wheezed out, his breaths laboured and distraught. Physiologically he was fine, he was more than ready to go another thousand rounds until he got it right.. Mentally and spiritually though...Elmorni could see that he was confused, and his soul ached for Zurvduat’s approval.

“What am I doing wrong?” He said, hugging a knee to his chest and dipping his head. His mind was caught in a loop, trying to go over the events of the past and see where he had misstepped...where did he err...Five days of mistakes to go through, a hundred and twenty six hours and thirty seven minutes of disappointments. His heart ached, and the three of them could feel every moment of it.

“-You’ve done nothing wrong Arne, shhh…-” Elmorni said, her hand deploying its fingers as she ran it through his smooth, silky hair. She cupped his face and when she saw that tears were starting to flow from his eyes she flicked them away.

“I don’t know if I can do it mom…” He said, choking back a sob.

“-Of course you can. Let us speak to Zurvduat, you take this time and rest.-” Ygrak said, psychically checking on the other two to ascertain their intended courses of action while she tended to Arne’s tears, a hug snaking out from the boy as she patted him on his head.

“-General, what have you been putting the Neophyte through?-” Mortirk’s psychic voice had a taste of fury behind it that aroused the attention of Zurvduat, sensing possible disrespect from one who is supposed to be his subordinate. Mortirk could sense the choler of his commander on the rise before being choked back with a reminder that to emote so visibly was improper. Elmorni laid a hand on him, giving him her reassurance before she floated ahead of him, taking another look at the forlorn Arne as he listlessly examined the ground.

She was brave to go before Zurvduat, and she felt herself buckle slightly as his withering gaze fixated solely on her; followed by the stern attentions of the rest of the triumvirate. “-Zurvduat, he is a child. What you are putting him through is torture. He needs time to recover, to play and enjoy his life. Life which you agreed to give him.-” She steeled herself with iron forged of outrage for the condition of someone she saw as her son, she would not back down from this, not until she got what she sought.

Zurvduat’s anger passed, and in its place came the usual sense of dismissive scorn for foolish concerns. “-He must be ready for his duties as the vanguard of our peace. He must clad his soul in adamant obstinance and push through meagre discomforts. Far more malevolent beings than I shall test him, and he shall not be found wanting.-”

Elmorni refused to let this slide, her eye flaring as she stared directly into the sun of Zurvduat’s face. “-And what use will he be when he is broken by your efforts?-”

“-What was broken can be reforged.-”

Ygrak raised a hand and sent Elmorni indication that she wished to speak, getting a nod from the blue plated Alimbic as her red counterpart drifted ahead. “-You know as well as I do that he’s responded better to your rewards then your punishment. Why not bear through with his desire for affection for a while longer? You won’t need to wait for much longer until he comes of age.-”

“-We will speak on my reasonings in private later. For now...Pri-...Arne, approach me.-” His spindly claw digits almost seemed to spring out of his flipper like hand as they pointed to the child, a psychic intonation removing any ambiguity behind his meaning. Arne looked up from the ground and nodded, shaking slightly as he stepped towards the one eyed ancient.

“-Your performance has improved to be certain, young one. You still have room to grow, but the time for you to see what lays beyond the creche without our supervision approaches. Show me you have mastered the art of war and science, and I will show you the stars. Finish this course one last time. And before you go.-” He said, extending an arm as the transmatter systems of the Alimbics winked a brown bar broken up into thumb sized squares into being. Chocolate.

Arne smiled and looked up at Zurvduat for permission. He reached out hesitantly and then closed his hands around the bar. He took it into his hands and broke off a piece to enjoy. He let it melt in his mouth, refusing to bite down on the rich, fragrant taste of the theobromine so that he might savour it fully. He nodded excitedly as he started on the second square, fingers delicately snapping off the second piece to ensure he didn’t fission off more than he intended.

…

The last enemy fell as he extracted his power blade from the Cretaphid’s crystal, jumping to the ground as it exploded behind him and standing up to his feet proudly. A nod of approval finally came from Zurvduat, and Arne felt like he could take on the entire universe.

“-Excellent.-”

“Thank you…” He said, sitting down almost immediately and dismissing his helmet so that he could show the satisfied look on his face. He was proud, and for good reason. He was also rather in the mood to just...lie down here for a little while as he flopped onto his back and exhaled, eyes staring upwards at nothing in particular.

* * *

**Samus' logbook**

Planets: Pinwheel Galaxy: Zhakunai Nebula: Human Habitable: Chozo: Visited: Zebes (Part 1)

Zebes is a Class 5B planet with an Urthic ore crust ideal for subterranean construction. Though many zones on Zebes are seemingly inhospitible to life, extremely tough organisms have evolved on this planet that can thrive in conditions that would kill ordinary terrestrial creatures. Serving as the place of residence for a number of Chozo who have established a colony on the planet for seemingly unknown purposes, the planet is sealed from unwanted visitors by way of a simple planetary defense screen that yet remains impenetrable to any quantities of electromagnetic or kinetic assault. While the planet has a rich biosphere, 90% of the planet's biomass is in subsurface "hollow earth" caverns close to or within the planet's enormous subterranean oceans and seas. The surface is primarily comprised of savannah, desert, and grassland with the occasional forests and more than two thirds of its surface water comes in the form of upwells of aquifer water. Interest in the planet would later resurge following a spike in activity from the Zebesian Chozo in the aftermath of the K-2L raid.

_Samus' notes:_

Zebes doesn't look like much from space, an amber orb floating in the void. And while I will stand up for the beauty of the surface every time, it's what's beneath the world that makes it special. The jungles of Brinstar, the waters of Maridia, the fire of Norfair and other regions of the planet...it's my favourite planet in the whole of the universe, even given the predators it always feels like a place I can be safe in. Even Pyonchi and Okmin could always find places to play.

Mechanoids: Chojinzuko: Security: Combat Capable: Skitter Swarm

Designed to attack intruders into low level Chozo installations in large numbers, Skitter Swarms seek to overwhelm the enemy with a fusilade of micro-fusil bursts that when combined can cause runaway reactions in the target for extreme damage. This makes it imperative to prevent the Skitter Swarm from fulfilling this desired objective and to disperse them, preferably with explosive weapons that can affect the entire swarm at once. Utilising special psychofunctions to induce a suit charge are also highly effective in dispersing incoming attackers. In close quarters, Skitter drones seek to flense apart their targets with energised monomolecular blades able to cut through hardened carbon nanotubes without substantial difficulty, using vibrations to induce much deeper cuts than their limbs should be able to inflict.

_Samus' notes:_

Lightning armour melee usually gets through them in a hurry and if that doesn't work; the screw attack or speed booster will do the trick. Missiles and dispersed beam fire can also work if needed.

Mechanoids: Chojinzuko: Security: Combat Capable: Wadjra

A basic humanoid combat drone, the Wadjra is often used to guard places that may require some form of presentable face for security without the direct presence of a Chozo overseer. The Wadjra makes use of modular weapon systems that make their exact load out difficult to predict, but are generally regarded as vastly inferior to a true power suit wielder due to the lack of a psychic operator to properly utilise the equipment and due to the inferior components compared to a proper power suit. However in numbers, Wadjra are able to make use of highly effective and efficient tactics and can coordinate more easily the more of them there are as they share data and transfer energy to one another to top up their shielding.

_Samus' notes:_

There's no real fancy tricks to shooting them, but there's usually a noticeable energy build up before they send out pulses of energy transfer that are the signal to interrupt them before they can complete the transfer. Of course, if you're willing to slog through the entire group that's also an option.

Mechanoids: Chojinzuko: Security: Combat Capable: Mekaskree

Based on the infamous skrees of Zebes, Mekaskrees will perch from surveillance points before launching their attacks, seeking to use high frequency monomolecular superheated power blades to tear through their enemies. When detecting a high value enemy, they will often spin themselves to engulf their chassis in arcing energy fields that will sear and tear through targets with extreme efficiency. This is usually a prelude to usage of self destruct systems that will often finish off targets injured by the initial spiral dive attack. Mekaskrees are incapable of attacking at range, but are extremely fast in straight lines, but they notably are poor at adjusting their flight path at short notice and can thus be dodged by skilled combatants.

_Samus' notes:_

With their tendency to self destruct it's always best to aim at the one in proximity to the most others of the flock at once. That way you can take out much larger chunks of the group at a time and stop them from getting close.

Mechanoids: Chojinzuko: Security: Combat Capable: Trisek

Tripedal drones built in memory of the Alimbics, Triseks attack with ultrahigh temperature flameweapons and plasma lash devices that allow them to serve as lethally effective close combat systems. Able to burn and sear their way through most forms of opposition, the Trisek is able to surprise more distant foes with its fire ball launch attacks to strike more distant opponents. Maneuverability is provided by repulsor coils mounted in the legs, allowing them to move at extreme speeds or make massive leaps to close the distance. But despite their preference for close quarters combat, the Triseks are vulnerable to being grappled themselves due to their lack of true grabbing limbs. Forcing them into extreme close quarters will likely be decisive.

_Samus' notes:_

The central hinge that connects their torsos to their legs is easily severed by the power blade. Physically tearing them open or smashing into them is also effective at splitting them in two.

Mechanoids: Chojinzuko: Security: Combat Capable: Tankdrone 

Small scale autonomous vehicular combatants designed for light security duties, the Tankdrone is roughly comparable in scale and role to low grade infantry combat vehicles, rather ironically given the name. Tankdrones are well armoured and are difficult to damage without first weakening the armour enough to allow for blunt force trauma to crack open the plating entirely to induce structural failure. Temperature stresses from select forms of beam or subweapon fire are the best means of inducing this weakness within the armour plating. On the offensive, Tankdrones will make use of whirlsaw energy pellets that induce cyclical thermal and kinetic damage in the targets they strike, allowing them to deal damage after impact and use torsional forces to induce stress failure.

_Samus' notes:_

Melee is typically more effective than missile fire at breaking open their armour after thermal shock starts the job of weakening them. Which is fine with me, it's more fun that way.

Mechanoids: Chojinzuko: Industrial: Combat Capable: Tornegot (Part 1)

The Tornegot is designed for the purpose of blasting through lighter substances obstructing Chozo construction sites that do not require the more powerful drills of a Diggernaut yet cannot be teleported or transmuted for one reason or anotherl. With powerful aerokinetic devices built into their claw arms they are able to rapidly generate hypersonic wind forces able to erode through less solid substances in seconds while driving the disintegrated particulates forward to induce further erosion. The enormously powerful fans are also useful for removing other obstacles not firmly rooted in the ground as anything that is able to survive the fans is simply swept off of its feet barring extreme methods to retain footing. Cutting lasers are also mounted in the head to fine tune the process of mining, and power fields are fitted into the fan claws for further utility. However the power feed into the central head presents a weakness present within the eye.

_Samus' notes:_

Thank the Forgelord that Tornegots aren't as sturdy on their feet as Diggernauts or else I'd have a much harder time of things. That being said, keeping the pressure up with the Ice Beam is usually able to stop them in their tracks as long as there's enough air to crystallize around them to start locking up their joints. 

**Sylux's logbook**

Planets: Tetra Galaxy: Sentinel Verge: Human Habitable: Alimbic: Visited: Sentus Primaris (Part 1)

Sentus Primaris is former laboratory world within the Tetrarch Order of the Alimbics and a Class 6A planet with an extensive series of Alimbic facilities dedicated to storage and research. Populated by a mixture of natural life and leftover relics from the Tetrarch Order, Sentus Primaris is categorised as a Blue grade Hostile world. Archaeological records and crossreferencing with the Chozo show that Sentus Primaris (formerly known as Cekrakth) was inhabited to the very end of the Tetrarch Order where its populace was evacuated and seems to have been swept up in the disappearance of the whole of the Alimbic people. Though most of the secret projects on the planet remain blocked by the remaining guardians who seek to prevent looters from achieving access, the crew of the Caesarian Lance quickly re-established an Alimbic presence following the Cylosian catastrophe. Though unwanted access is prohibited, the world soon became a place of extreme interest.

_Arne's notes:_

I honestly hated this place. It's lonely here and the machines were rarely good friends. And every day we stayed they cleared out more and more of the nature that overgrew the place. I like technology, but it started to feel oppressive. Hugin & Munin couldn't even find proper places to roost half the time until Elmorni made the arrangements. It's cold, metallic and unfriendly. I don't want to ever go back.

Mechanoids: Alimbic: Security: Combat Capable: Psychobit

A levitating spherical sentry droid equipped with 360-degree sensors and a low-level teleportation device. The basic silver model fires kinetic energy blasts equivalent to the Chozo Power Beam system, whereas the advanced green model features a heavy duty gun launching ultra-dense radioactive projectiles launched by a nanoscale nuclear propulsion system. Manufactured from any gatherable matter en masse, Psychobits are vulnerable to most forms of concentrated weapons fire able to pierce through their shielding and armour. As such they are of little concern to precursor grade combatants save for in large swarms. However their teleportation systems, speed, and numbers allows them to easily outflank targeted enemies to provide multiple angle threats.

_Arne's notes:_

Fast, numerous, always more being built and packing decent amounts of firepower. Best thing to do is to pack something to deal with multiple aerial enemies at a time. Seeker missiles especially. 

Mechanoids: Alimbic: Security: Combat Capable: Voldrum

A high-speed rolling robot in nearly constant motion. Equipped with two large guns for attacking from a distance, it is equally efficient at close-quarters combat through its ability to generate close range disruptor fields that augment its ramming capabilities. Voldrums are more durable than their airborne Psychobit counterparts, and possess substantially more firepower as compensation for their reduced mobility. Though standard models do not have any particular weakness, they also do not possess any particular resistances and so can be dealt with by any weapon capable of causing their shielding and armour damage. Given their tendency to come in packs, area of effect weapons are recommended.

_Arne's notes:_

The easiest thing to do is to get an elevational advantage over them. They can jump but they're not graceful in the air. After a million and one training exercises, I think I've learned how to vertically flank them well enough.

Mechanoids: Alimbic: Security: Combat Capable: Guardian

Specifically designed to guard the Tetrarch Order in case of violation of its facilities by trespassers, these automatons are now programmed to serve in its absence. These intelligent androids often travel in packs, attacking with energy projectiles produced by three small ZPE generators located in the cranium. With highly modular weapon systems, Guardians are extremely versatile and can be expected to make use of any number of weapons. Once companions to the Alimbic Warriors, they are designed to serve as essentially inferior versions of them, providing supporting fire and cover where needed as well as scouting ahead, harrying routing foes, and tying up assets that may otherwise interfere with more valuable or powerful assets in their duties.

_Arne's notes:_

Phase Drifting is immensely useful for dealing with their love of jumping around as if someone injected psychospiked fuel gel into their systems, there's no special trick to fighting them besides slamming your shots home into their heads. But that's a hard ask when they're designed to be hyper-agile.

Mechanoids: Alimbic: Security: Combat Capable: Crash Pillar

Highly pleasing to Alimbic aesthetics, this sentry cyborg is dormant until it senses an intruder, and returns to a dormant state once the threat retreats. The Crash Pillar levitates by means of antigravity propulsion before attempting to smash its quarry. Vulnerable neurocircuity is housed underneath the base. Crash Pillars are extremely resistant to most weapons across the rest of their chassis to the point of near immunity and are immensely physically strong thanks to ultra high density synthetic fibromuscle packages located through out the machine's internal construction and as such is very difficult to engage in melee. Gravity manipulators are utilised to assist the machine in crushing foes it is able to float over, with few enemies surviving more than one impact.

_Arne's notes:_

My moms and dads can say whatever they like but I'll always think they look ugly. Just...big cylinder tripods standing there waiting to belly flop. If there's art behind it I don't get it and I don't think I want to. Dealing with them's simple enough if a bit chancy.

Mechanoids: Alimbic: Security: Combat Capable: Crawlmech

Created by the Tetrarch order to ensure that the sanctity of medium value facilities remained observed, the Crawlmech is large and heavy to provide for stability for its massive caliber weapons suite to deliver heavy duty firepower to important zones of conflict. While considerably less adept in close quarters combat than other Alimbic war machines and exceeded by many later models of Alimbic large scale security drone, the Crawlmech's sheer size presents an obstacle for many would be enemies as its weak point is on the underbelly. A point difficult to reach given the effort required to upturn the large machine. Weapons fire into its central head systems may stun it and allow for an opportunity to overwhelm its rooting into the ground and provide an opportunity to launch a decisive attack.

_Arne's notes:_

They're artillery pieces which means getting as close as you can is the best course of action. And a good punch to the head is usually enough to disrupt their targeting systems. Or knock them off their feet. Probably not very useful advice for most people who aren't me.

Mechanoids: Alimbic: Security: Combat Capable: Cretaphid

Utilizing some of the most sophisticated known Alimbic robotics technology, this massive cylindrical mechanism features precision laser weaponry as well as bio-energy seeking bursts of plasma. The Cretaphid is a key component of Alimbic defense technology, designed to safeguard important or sacred objects. Cretaphid armour and shielding is nearly impenetrable, but the core will be forced to temporarily eject if dangerous levels of feedback are detected. Feedback can be induced through attacking weapon nodes not currently in use, when all weapon nodes have registered sufficient damage to begin regenerative protocols the core will exit and begin its own efforts to attack with an ionic burst generator. However this leaves the core vulnerable to virtually all weapons fire until it returns to the pillar upon completion of regenerative protocols. Once the core is destroyed, the pillar will self destruct to avoid capture.

_Arne's notes:_

The Cretaphids are mostly just battles of endurance. You need to dodge until they show their vulnerabilities as they charge up the next set of weapons to shoot at you. After that it's fairly straight forward. The issue is more in keeping clear of all the projectiles sent your way. Not complicated opponents but I'm more curious as to why the Alimbics like big cylinders so much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy new years everyone!


	11. Forlorn: The Paths Entwine (SA & AS)

_Orbit of Arganti, Aurelarch System, Argent Nebula, Black Eye Galaxy._

Thought stretched out across space and time to reach for the minds of the long sleeping and recently risen. Two old minds reached for each other, their threads wrapping around each other into an impenetrable coil of telepathic communication. Across the endless expanse of the universe; or rather, just this little room these two minds met again as they had time after time again. On one end the golden light of Re-Sekh, Old Bird; gentle and calming, loving and sweet. On the other end was the azure glow of Elmorni, the Muse, motherly and warm, soft and kind.

Since his reawakening they had spoken to each other many times, Re-Sekh always asking to meet Elmorni in person so that the two elders could compare notes as it were. To see what progress the other had made. She made her secret rendezvous with her counterpart on Arganti, a neutral place held by neither Chozo nor Alimbic. But now she had something else in mind. Looking across the circular room as she spoke to the elder, she caressed a flower in a trough gently with the split fingers from her hand before rotating her floating, neckless head back to her counterpart.

"-I appreciate your efforts to keep me informed of your actions wise one. Especially to journey all the way out to this distant star just to have a chat with an old friend. So much time lost that we have to catch up on.-" Ten years to catch up on more than fifty thousand years of lost time for their old friendship. So far it hardly felt like they had even been making a dent in the monstrous task of making up for the lost era. But every meeting was warm and amicable.

There were conversations that repeated themselves with every in person meeting. Things the two always wanted to share even the smallest updates on. Usually the little things, personal matters that moved day to day rather than anything to do with grand and sweeping schemes and matters of politics.

"How are Ygrak and Mortirk? Have you started to see anyone else for that matter? I would hope that you have opened your heart further even in this era of twilight for the likes of our species. It would be a shame to forever crystallise yourself in the amber of present relations."

She seemed to be elated that he asked, almost beatific. She hummed with a pleasant energy, her azure armour seeming to intensify the glow of its highlights as she swivelled her body fully towards him. And when she spoke again, her thoughtsong was wistful and melodic her mind drifting to ever more pleasant things. A topic she could bend his ear about for an eternity if he would only give her leave to speak about it.

"-Ygrak has started to take to the duties of caring for the boy more readily every day. Arne adores Mortirk...and I've started to see Agrama. Her thoughtsong is such rich music.-" She said. The thoughtsong of her voice was elated, rising above its usual sweetness to something a bit more wistful and happy.

"It is good that even at your age you can still find new things to inspire cheer. Were all of us who were so old so ready to find new joy."

She picked up on his small chuckle as he let his helmet part from his face in a fizzle of light so that he could drink from a cup of hot tea held in his left gauntlet. His beak clicked against the glass and let the rich aromas of the brown, heated water fill his nostrils. The intoxicating scent of tanin, theobromine, caramelised sugars and more invaded his scent as he took a sip. The smooth honeyed liquid slid down his throat with little issue, and he almost trilled in satisfaction as the hot liquid wetted his throat. He let the warmth fill him, feeling an almost bodywide relaxation as the tea seemed to spread itself into every pore and cell. A vice that he often indulged in, even in his autumn years.

She however, seemed envious. Such morsels seemed so delctable to someone who could not taste them. A pleasure denied to her by her choice to remain hidden away in her armour for now out of respect for one she saw as a peer and thus should be met as such at all times. But alas, this was yet more suffering she would have to bear in jesting silence. She might teasingly complain about it to him later though, of course. She had missed the playful ribbing they had once given each other in her fifty thousand years of sleep. But she sensed the heavy words of his name about to slip his throat, like leadened weights strung onto the air. Unpleasant, a burden on thought and a sore on the eyes.

"I hear you have convinced Zurvduat to attend the meeting. How much effort did you require to molt his carapace?" He asked after a prolonged sip of his tea. Unpleasant memories of prolonged arguments bubbled forth and had to be fought down just as swiftly. No, she reminded herself, don't let that spoil the mood.

"-Beyond your imagination. I had to entice him with the offer of a chance to demonstrate his superiority. And that Mother Brain of yours...will be attending I assume?-" She asked, the psychic equivalent of a brow quirk forming like an imperative in his mind.

"She insisted to be allowed to observe. I thought it would be harmless enough to indulge her. Though remember to keep her at arms length. She is gruff and unsuited for softer tasks, but given time she may learn."

His eyes looked upwards at the taller insectoid, red upon yellow, two into one.

"But your Neophyte...I will be very glad to meet him in person."

"-Likewise, I'm sure the Hatchling has grown to be a wonderful young woman.-" A genuflection was offered, prompt and polite.

A feeling of warmth exuded from him as he looked her dead in her singular eye, responding with a gesture of his own to show his respect for a fellow ancient of many years. "May they represent cooperation between our two peoples rather than division."

Cooperation, a nice thought. Perhaps unlikely, difficult with the heavy weight of foregone aeons weighing down all interactions between the two peoples. But it was very much a nice thought all the same. "-I would hope that we could all bury the ancient rivalry. Be comrades in philosophy as well as arms as we were in the old days.-"

"I would enjoy that greatly. To the shared dream." He said.

"-To the shared dream.-" She agreed.

_Chozodian Creche, Zebes_

Samus was just about bouncing with glee as she received the news. She had leaped straight out of her seat where she had been busy reading through datalogs on a screen, her white coloured sleeveless outfit flexing somewhat as she moved and landed onto her feet after managing the backflip. She calmed down quickly enough, stilling herself before she could do something like tackle the people who raised her to the ground. But there was a tense energy within her, one waiting for an avenue of release. Her eyes had a bright gleam and her expression, though relaxing gradually was clearly one of keen interest.

She had just about tackled Isa-Hesh with her hug, the Chozo letting out a surprised coo but returning the gesture all the same. She was a hugger, a platinum class triple A grade cuddler whose arms were as capable of gentle softness as they were of crushing the life from even the roughest of beasts.

"What's Arganti like?" She asked, the first question that came to her mind.

"A quiet planet. Once a place of discussion and trade. But for this meeting it can be so once again. A place of festivities and merriment, even given some of the company we will be keeping." August Wing said gently, stroking her hair as she spoke, getting Samus to rub her head into the strokes affectionately.

"Mmh, what about its biosphere? What lives on it now?" Ah, the real questions.

"Mostly docile life forms. You won't be finding any creatures of the wild to test yourself against there. But many machines of eras long past cling to its old bones. You will find excitement there, should you wish it." Grey Voice spoke up, folding his hands behind his back. Samus studied his face, impassive as ever unfortunately, just like his usual monotone. But then, why else call him Grey Voice? Colourless, dull...She banished such thoughts and nodded her head.

"Have you met the Alimbics? Are they like the stories say?" She asked.

Another presence dropped into the room with the grace of an anvil tossed out the airlock to make re-entry. A heavy, malignant aura that almost made everyone feel like they weighed a dozen times more than they should was now cast onto them like an eclipse's shadow. A spherical drone bearing an eye like camera floated around, a swarm of lesser drones hovering around it as if it were a bee queen being ferried to a new hive. When they spoke, it was with the telepathic equivalent of having a megaphonepressed to your ear, grating, unpleasant and full of noisy feedback.

"-Certainly their leadership has a better handle on how to approach the questions of galactic politics than most of those within this room.-" Mother Brain said.

Oh _great_ , Samus thought.

"-What a pity then, that I am denied a chance to collaborate with them up until this point. No matter, the error of that will be corrected now.-"

"Mother...you were not invited to this conversation." Grey Voice.

He was stern, even towards her. While technically Platinum Voice had the run of things while Old Bird was away; Somek-Ka had the air of leadership behind him. He was still possessed of youthful vigour, and his gaze was harder than Inviolanium alloy. Even Mother Brain blinked when made to contest her gaze before that. But it was only a blink.

"-Zebes _is_ my body, Grey Voice. The circuits _you_ have woven through it are my nerves, the energy I draw from the zebetite my oxygen, the command nodes are my synapses, the machinery my cells. I will it, and it is done. Do not presume that I am a junior you can cut out of conversations simply because you dislike my presence. I will speak, and I shall be listened to.-"

Samus growled internally, low enough to ensure that she could not hear while her expression formed into a frown. Why did she have to barge into what was supposed to be a space she could speak privately in? It was bad enough that she literally had eyes across the entire planet and beyond through her enormous network of cameras and sensors, but having her direct presence in this room felt sacrosanct and invasive. An unpleasant reminder that Mother knew everything and could not be escaped.

"Can't you ask before you poke in here?" Samus said.

"-I am already monitoring your whereabouts and actions at all times, Infant. There is no need for me to request consent to move one of my Oculi avatars to your location.-"

"Shut up. Please, just shut up." Samus grunted, her voice low and private.

"-Your presumption to give me orders is unamusing and misplaced, _Infant_ ; and you would be wise to remember this. Need I remind you that after your stunt with the Iono-Feria you require special monitoring lest you have another temper tantrum.-" Mother Brain's insult prompted Samus to grab the spherical machine in her hands the second it floated near her to try and invade her personal space, her fingers starting to crush inwards with enough force to leave impressions on metal meant to survive even the molten heat of Norfair or the deepest seas of Maridia.

"Do. Not. Remind. Me." The growl in her voice was like that of a crocodile. What would happen if Mother Brain pushed it was made obvious as the Oculi's chassis began to crumple from the squeezing of her deceptively slender fingers.

"-And here we have another example of your lack of discipline.-"

"They were _innocent_ , they didn't know what they were doing with those guns. You _murdered_ them all after I disarmed them. Why didn't you trust me!?"

"-You are naive. They showed clear violent tendencies. It was simpler to eliminate than to rehabilitate.-"

"THAT'S NOT TRUE AND YOU KNOW IT!"

"That was about control, about showing me up for proving you wrong. Stop lying to me and get a clue!" She shouted as the metal for the Oculi started to crush inwards. Already immense pressure intensified further as she let her scorn be known, but Grey Voice's stern gaze was soon pointed towards her before she could show Mother Brain just how well she'd been paying attention in mechanical studies.

"Samus, that will be enough. She will be coming, but as one amongst equals. Is that not correct, Mother Brain?" He said, tilting his head at first towards the young girl, and then towards the machine she reluctantly let go of. Grey Voice gave a slightly pleased nod of acknowledgement that got the tiniest of smirks from the young girl, but a profound sense of disappointed irritation from Mother Brain.

"Samus is our child and appointed heir, you will respect her as she is due, Mother Brain." August said, clasping her gauntleted fingers together after patting Samus on the back.

"-Yes...your... _our_ Heir.-"

_War Fields, Sentus Primaris_

Arne leaped out of the cockpit of the _Sleipnir_. The forward swept wings and enlarged tailfins almost gave the impression of having two sets of wings, like some insectile merging of the old Earth Su-37 and an enlarged Su-47 into one hyper-preformance fighter craft, and the canards on its conical nose almost gave one the impression that whomever designed the two tone blue and one tone red highlighted craft was very much of the opinion that having anything less than the greatest possible amount of control surfaces was the basest form of heresy. But the twin tails, angled subtly, when combined with its shifting thrusters and its rather smooth arthropoid like chassis made it clear that this was a craft that could dance in any atmosphere, not just space.

Arne himself had participated in designing the _Sleipnir_ as his examination of choice for his technology studies program. And his reward for passing the test was the chance to name it at Ygrak's insistence. Zurvduat himself saw it as a waste of his time to oppose the endeavour, especially when the Palatine Mind A.I of the Caesarian Lance had given the boy his voice of approval. and so acquiesced. Even his authority had limits, however much he detested them. And he felt proud of his accomplishment.

That pride rose even higher when the sounds of the exploding practice drones his hovering craft had vanquished finally caught up to him as he landed. Thunderclaps and the keen of exploding plasma cells caught his attention, but his eyes were focused on Ygrak who was monitoring the exercise; the Red Tetrarch. His helmet dissipated into blue light while he looked with a satisfied smile at her approving nod. But her enthusiasm paled compared to the Black armoured Agrama; Chief of Engineers who regarded him with deep felt pride that rooted itself in his mind as if he was the one who felt it himself.

"-Your piloting skills are exemplary. Perhaps the best of any recruit I've ever had to work with. And your rate of improvement is just stellar. Good job, Arne.-" Agrama said, offering him a pat on the head that got a warm, affectionate smile from the boy. He looked at the Black carapaced Alimbic and gave her a quick embrace before pulling back and looking to Ygrak who

"-There was clear room for improvement, we should continue practice.-" Zurvduat said.

"+That will not be necessary. He has had four hours of continual practice drills, a break is recommended.+" The Palatine Mind chimed in. The Palatine's voice was firm but fair. Though merely an advisor, his judgements had never been anything less than reasonable. Arne liked him though he was ultimately distant, mostly seeking to optimise the preformance of limited resources.

"-He is right, let us give him more time. Especially when we will be departing for Arganti soon enough.-" Ygrak said.

"-Why would we allow him to break from his training to allow him to...vacation on Arganti? I remain opposed to allowing him to depart.-" Urim said, folding his arms, not even acknowledging Arne was there at all.

"I'm here you know? And I want to go. Please don't take this from me." The boy said. He was concerned that there was even a discussion about pulling him away from a chance to go out and explore the universe beyond Sentus Primaris or the _Caesarian Lance_. Especially after this trip had been planned for so long. He was honestly hurt that they'd even consider not letting him go for the sake of more damned by every single deity he prayed to retrials. Had he not already proven himself beyond any room for doubt that he could handle it? What more did they want?

"Didn't you tell me I was already the best pilot here?" He asked, pointedly looking at Urim who returned the gaze as if to say something before evidently thinking better of it. Urim disliked his tendency to ask questions, and he never made that not obvious in every interaction he had with the Green armoured Alimbic.

"-That you are the best among this limited company does not mean we cannot make you better still, that is all.-" Urim said.

"-You need not sound so apologetic for speaking the truth.-" Osith said, her voice as rigid as a metal pillar.

"-While I do not believe it is useful to continue to needle him for overall improvement, to deny that there were some flaws in his technique would be to coddle him. We have time, another practice run could be done in that span.-" Deglos said as Arne started to simmer in his corner. He didn't feel it fair or just that they should be given leave to go and...just talk about him as if he wasn't even there to listen.

But he had another sympathizer amongst the ranks of the Alimbics, and they had similar thoughts regarding the habits of the others. "-Perhaps your time in frontline service in the military has addled your memories but this is no way to raise a child. Arne, are you alright? They haven't asked for further obscenities of training have they? Is there anything you would like for me to pass to Elmorni before we see her?-" Mortirk said, his yellow frame floating into view and quickly pulling Arne away from the gaze of the Tetrarch's peers.

"-They've pushed him hard for the strike craft combat lessons, but he's fine for now. Still, I think it is time we move onto other topics, if it would please the military triumvirate; we of the civilian tetrarchy submit our appeal to end training for the duration of festivities.-" Ygrak said, offering a small bow to the gathered officials out of respect. Necessitated but not exactly desired. She was under little illusion that the military officials regarded her authority as scarcely worth the chameleocircuits of her armour but if she put her foot down maybe, just maybe they would listen to her for once.

Deglos and Osith looked to one another to confer in telepathic silence. The buzz of their voices inaudible to Arne. He wondered for a moment what they were saying, unaware of the vicious debate the two had. Deglos' apathy pitted against Osith's scorn. But even without being able to peer into the conversation he was able to sense a great deal of strife between the two. Mental heat washing over his mind's perception as they aired their proverbial dirty laundry in front of him. Definitely an experience he could do without. Zurvduat for his part was pointedly being distracted from the conversation by the attentions of the Palatine; to keep his mouth shut before he said anything.

Finally, the note of a bitter agreement was plucked in the air and he sensed a degree of satisfaction, signifying that they had resolved their debate with a degree of amicability. "Well? What do you think?" He asked, though he tensed visibly when the two of them looked back at him. He felt exposed, as if he was about to be punished. He very well could be, he had spoken out of turn after all, but he was starting to feel defiant.

"-You will have your rest then, Primoris.-" Osith said as if the words were poison in her nonexistent throat.

"-Excellent, may I suggest a range of fulfilling recreational activities then?-" The Palatine said.

"Oh...sure!" Arne smiled, a small victory but he'd take it all the same.

_Orbit of Arganti, Aurelarch System, Argent Nebula, Black Eye Galaxy._

The _Exodia_ dropped from N-space like a stone tossed from the water, rippling and stretching into the realms of normal space. The fields of energy that crackled around it came to a stop and a world that had once been a Jewel of peace and prosperity laid before the gathered Chozo within. It was a world with sprawling cityscape spider-webbing through carefully managed parks and reserves, mixing nature in with what could have easily been an ordinary ecumenopolis. Even though Arganti was a world in disuse, its starlanes no longer crawling with traffic and the background psychic noise that had once been so rich having faded. The ethereal, higher energies of once common rituals done in pursuit of mystic knowledge had diffused; no longer corraled by the ancients that once met in this place so regularly. Yet it, and the ring and flotilla of continent-sized orbitals built around it as a small gesture of unity, retained a sense of wonder despite all that.

It was once a Jewel, and when the less advanced, younger societies of the cosmos had reached the point where they would be allowed through its drone defences it could be so once again.

But for now, a world meant to offer hopsice to many trillions of guests was now host to a small event between just a few thousands. A reminder of how far things have fallen from the old glory days. Children in the shadow of the titans and gods of yesteryear. And for all that, it was the most wonderful thing Samus had seen. Continents with carefully geometrically arranged cities, gentle oceans spreading across the world, harmoniously organised nature. A true testament to the genius of those who had constructed this artificial planet more than three million years ago. A very different age, when the species of the girl looking out the window had yet to even really form and her hairy, crude, and rock shaping wielding ancestors barely comprehended the sights above them in the night sky.

To think that just sixty thousand years after man had truly begun to harness life in the form of purpose bred plants to fill their bellies she would be honored with a sight like this before her eyes made her feel proud. No human before her had ever seen this place, and many who visited it doubted whether humans would ever prove themselves worthy of its grandeur before the last of its custodians disappeared or passed into the long sleep. But she was here to stand proud amongst some of the last of the elders.

"It's beautiful." She said, her expression serene. The power suit that clad her body marked her as someone worthy to stand here to the drones that scanned the _Exodia_. Their sensory probes analysing every passenger before relaying their approval and to allow them through the transdimensional barriers that augmented such paltry things as mere shielding around this world. Spacetime contorted and then straightened to let them through to this sacred place. Like whipping a bedsheet straight to let something roll down it without obstruction. Sorcery, science, who could say?

The shielding of the planet wrapped around their ship as it descended to the surface, the blue sky lit by the artificial captive suns locked in an aesthetically pleasing pattern enveloping the ship once it reached a low enough altitude. Sound could be heard through the ship once it had deigned to allow as such, sensors reading the vibrations of the air to provide recreations of the sounds outside for the benefit of those inside.

The animals were singing, the drones were humming, and the air rustled with wind.

A statue dedicated to a moment of triumph by a grand coalition over a monolithic foe. Platinum Crest's eyes lit up with fond recollection, but she couldn't recognise more than half of the species represented. And most of the ones she did were just old stories. A quick glance at the others told the feathered old wizard that he was alone in his recollections, and his eyes dimmed.

"It's okay...you can share stories about them." Samus said.

"And that's all most of them are now...stories." He said.

She nodded sadly. She could understand his pain far too well for someone ten thousand times younger than he was.

A change in tracks was needed. This was not the time nor the place to dig up old wounds. There were to be guests coming here. The populace of the Caesarian Lance and a few relics of past ages such as Spire and Svhilay were all that were gathered for a somewhat lively by recent standards event for festivities and discussions. This would be her first, and she was legitimately excited. Yet...where were the Alimbics whose return was supposed to be such great news?

"When are the Alimbics arriving?" She asked, it seemed to be the most obvious question to her.

"Give them a little time Samus, I am sure they are attending to their business first. But they will come, all roads point to their arrival. We need only wait a little longer." August Wings said, Isa-Hesh's gauntleted fingers touching Samus' hair and stroking it gently as she spoke to her. Her eyes gazing down towards her with warm care and motherly affection.

"Spare a few moments of attention ahead if you would be so kind. Our Elder is coming to greet us." Grey Voice said, raising a hand before the air seemed to crackle with energy. The mechanisms of the planet's technology worked in ways barely perceptible to Samus' ordinary senses but the sense of anticipation from his impending arrival by ancient mechanisms made the air alive with colours no ordinary human could ever see to her other senses. And with a fingersnap, he was there. And his gaze switched targets from his kin to his daughter in an eyeblink.

"Samus! It's so nice to see you." He said with clear pleasure, a satisfied caw coming from the ancient's beak as he extended his robed arms to welcome the armour clad teenager towards him. He swept her up in his arms as she ran towards him for a hug and squeezed her tight before setting her down again. He patted at her head and met her eyes with his own in a comforting gaze before the two nuzzled comfortably into each other and shared a content exhalation.

"I'm happy to see you too papa." She said, smiling that wide "climb the highest mountain simply because it's there and nobody else has" smile.

"As I you...the person I miss most in these excursions is always you Samus. I have so much to show you around here." She kissed his beak once as a token of appreciation and he returned the favour with a light peck to her head, a tap with the blunt of his beak to the forehead that made her giggle slightly.

"Where's Elmorni? You talk about her so much, I'd really like to see her! Is it true what War Hawk is saying? Are you two nestmaking?" She said, getting a hearty laugh from the old avian.

"Horath-Baast has an active imagination, but she only bonds within her own kind in that way, and she prefers the company of women at that. We are just old friends happy to see each other again after so many years." His laugh faded into a small trilling chuckle as he pet her hair, gauntleted fingers warm to the touch.

"But you didn't answer my question..." She said, her voice slightly coy and expression still undimmed in terms of curiosity.

"Ah...she is waiting to greet Zurvduat." He said.

"What's he like?"

Old Bird seemed to almost come to a stop as he considered how to answer Samus' question. She had asked honestly and earnestly, and so she deserved an answer in the same kind. Yet his knowledge of the Knight-General was certainly...second hand yes, though what he knew was certainly far from flattering. If anything it made the idea of meeting him twist his gizzard into a number of very complicated knots. And what the distant sight informed him of the Grey General certainly did very little to alleviate the tremendous apprehension he felt regarding the very idea of having to speak to him in person.

"From what I know, not someone you would enjoy the company of. Nor would he enjoy yours." He said, condensing his thoughts down as much as he could.

"He's a mean guy I'm guessing? That's a shame...I'm sure we could find something to be friends about if I tried." She said, planting a hand over her chest and giving a grin.

"Remember Samus, a good friend is someone who will make effort with you, not make you take all of the burdens for them. Solidarity is what makes for friendship, not sacrifice."

"I understand papa, you've told me that many times already." She said.

He nodded beatifically and clasped his fingers around his cane. Simple, undecorated, something for a humble man with few ambitions. He was so happy to see her growing so quickly. But the distortions in the skies above told him of something else arriving; as did the ripples in his distant sight. He hazarded a look upwards, followed by her and the others. The mighty prow of the _Caesarian Lance_ hung overhead, heavy and imperious as ever. Its forward swept pseudowings cut into the air like mightyu cleavers, and the primary eye cannon at the front glowed like the sun itself. The size of a mountain and with more firepower than some nations had in their entire fleets, its presence was here for the simple reason of intimidation. Comparatively, the somewhat pyramid shaped Exodia was humble, unassuming. Samus much preferred the latter, it felt less like the master of the ship had something to prove.

"An _Exergis_ class Battlecruiser. Now that I haven't seen in a very long time." Grey Voice said, mildly impressed which was about the most emotion Samus had seen from him in a month.

"If only we were still operating such warships." Star Strider sighed bitterly.

"I believe that in the past we condemned the Tetrarch Order for such blatant intimidation." War Hawk said. "But in your day, didn't they also say that you were an Alimbic Knight born into the wrong society?" That got a laugh out of everyone else while Star Strider snarled beneath their helmet, clearly displeased with this blatant show of disrespect. However Grey Voice simply raised a hand to signal to everyone, Samus included that the time for a little giggle had passed.

"Well...we shouldn't wait too long to meet the people inside! Come on!" She said, starting to walk forward and gesturing her adoptive family to follow. Old Bird hesitated briefly though, there was a sour note in the air emnating from that ship.

_Surface of Arganti, below the Caesarian Lance_

Arne stood apprehensively in the room, looking out through the monocular visor of his helmet. It was isolated but it kept the others from reading his expression. He looked anxiously for signs of Elmorni from the data feeds, and sighed when he couldn't find any sign of her yet. But a hand from Ygrak made him feel wanted and cared for, his muscles relaxing as he felt her lay on them. He felt their bond of kinship and he smiled at her through his helmet, laying his hand on hers as she turned her floating, neckless head down towards him.

The mixture of architectural styles of the cityscape below interested him. As he looked down, the names of each of the cultures represented flashed in his recollection. N'Kren, Ylla, Alimbic, Chozo, Faera, Oronaerb, Pikdak, Sesyren, Xan-Thar, But the empty nature of the buildings made him feel as hollow as they were. Cities were supposed to have people, empty as they are now all they were was shells. Echoes of a once spoken voice. Now it was more like...an empty gym. It felt sad, pathetic. Even a little creepy. But most of all, it felt like a waste. People could be living here right now instead of keeping this place as some mausoleum.

"-Your feelings are righteous Arne. But some refuse to let go of the past. It's up to us to look to the future, and create a world where people can look to tomorrow eagerly.-" Ygrak said

He had read something much like that from the writings of his parents. Words he took solace in as they seemed so much warmer and more relatable than much of what he had been hearing from his current family. Well, mostly. His moms cared for him. Mortirk cared for him. The Mind...sort of cared for him in his own way. It was enough to make him smile despite everything that had happened. The knowledge that there was light made any amount of darkness seem paltry.

But there was sour thunder in the air, a presence to make him shiver with fear as he turned around to look upon its source. The Grey armour of Zurvduat loomed large in his eyes and he looked away with a heavy breath. He straightened himself, made sure he looked as presentable as possible and gave his "father" a nod of respect as he made himself respectable for his forger. He could sense the air souring as if it were curdling in his presence, perhaps a product of Zurvduat's power, perhaps simply because he could sense an intense malevolence.

"-You had best not embarrass me, boy. Remain at optimum performance and do nothing to besmirch the name of myself and the Order.-" Zurvduat said, his cold voice becoming deeper in his mind as Arne's vision seemed to stretch out until there was nothing but a black tunnel with Zurvduat and himself in it, the sight of Ygrak, the ship, and all the other alimbics vanishing as he suddenly felt far more alone. His submissive fear to Zurvduat allowed such a communication through, and his fingers twitched nervously as he tried to avoid the malevolent gaze

"-You will do nothing to make me look foolish before the Chozo. Or I will show you that even the Tetrarchy's affections for you only go so far in preserving you. You are a Knight in my image, a creation of my hand, a warrior of my school.-" Each word was spoken in a low, menacing growled psychic voice so unlike Zurvduat's usual aloofly disdainful imperious tones. This was a threat, and Arne began to breathe quickly as he felt like he had to run, but where could he go from here? Everywhere he looked there was darkness, save for Zurvduat's eye.

"-You will make me proud to have you in my service or you will regret not having perished with your family. Just as I have reforged you from broken splinters, I can break you again. Have I made myself clear? Or must I give you a demonstration?.-" Arne choked and nodded weakly. His body felt like there were needles, sinking into every inch of his flesh. He felt like his heart was trying its best to explode, he felt his muscles shaking and tremoring under Zurvduat's gaze. What did he do wrong? What would he do wrong? Why...what could he do to make it right?

"I promise...I'll do my best. Please, believe me. I won't do anything to upset you. I'm ready to do my part. You don't have to worry...just let me go...please..." He said, putting on his best attempt to appear calm. To be without fear, to be without worry, to be without weakness. The effort appeased the Knight-General however, and he relaxed. Dawn returned and the world seemed to unfreeze, shape and colour snapping back into place and Arne's tremors starting to subside and fade.

"-Excellent. You will do me proud, boy.-" Zurvduat said, laying a hand on Arne that made him freeze at first before he relaxed when he felt no accompanying pain. He just had to keep this mood going so that he could survive the day without having to deal with any ugly confrontations. He could do that, yeah...he just keep Zurvduat pleased. Then he would be so proud of him.

The teleporters crackled, he had missed a conversation and he found himself suddenly standing in the cityscape where the Blue Armoured frame of his adoptive mother stood looking upon the buildings before she turned her head around to look upon her son with the easy grace he had come to expect of her. His helmet fizzled in blue light and his expression shifted to one of elated delight.

"Mom!" He said without hesitation.

She turned around, pivoting in her hovering position and seeming to light up as she rushed over to him lifted him up to eye level with her. For a moment, he forgot all about Zurvduat and all about the fear of disappointing him. He had his first adoptive mother, and that was all that mattered in the whole of the universe to him at this moment. He kissed at her forehead and she touched head with him in return, humming a little tune that Gyda had once sung to him when he was virtually an infant all those years ago.

"-Little Eagle...how are you?-" She said.

"-All vital signs nominal, Mystromagus Elmorni.-" The Palatine Mind added. Elmorni brushed it off, a response she didn't ask for from someone whose commentary she had expressed no interest in hearing at the moment.

"Will I impress them?" He asked, privately, secretly. He whispered as quietly as he could, waiting for Zurvduat's attention to be elsewhere, knowing full well that Zurvduat could read the vibrations of his words to see what he said. He didn't want to show weakness before them, and Elmorni's psychic expression instantly changed to one of concern and worry.

"-Is Zurvduat frightening you again? I thought I made it clear to him that he was not to intimidate you again. Don't you worry about him Arne, I will talk sense into the General.-" She said, not at all enjoying the scared nod that Arne gave in response before she set him down and ruffled his silver-white hair slightly. She relaxed as he felt some relief and let out a sniffle, she had always encouraged him to be more open when he was upset. And so he wore his heart on his sleeve for her, sniffling again before she laid a hand on his face and hushed him.

"Are the uh...Chozo as nice as they say?" He asked, trying to switch course to a more relevant topic.

"-You cannot say any species as a whole is kind or cruel. Every person is shaped by the circumstances they live within, all of our choices are limited by the world we live in. But many of them will see you the way I do.-" She said, splitting a finger to hold his chin and turn his chin up towards her, a feeling of warmth coiling its way through his body and banishing his worries. Confidence reasserted itself, and he reassured himself that everything was going to be alright.

"Like a son?" He asked, teasingly and flicking his tongue out in a playful display.

"-Perhaps not exactly the way I do, but from what I hear, Old Bird loves his daughter the way I love you and that's seen as something to encourage. To relish. So I think you will like them Arne.-" She said, her gentle voice low and songlike.

"-It would be best for us to not keep our esteemed colleagues waiting. I detect the presence of many small portioned easily consumed meals and liquids with elevated degrees of saccharine chemicals. Snacks and drinks in other words.-" The Palatine Mind said, causing Arne's head to snap towards the Synthetic Consciousness' chosen avatar, the floating White Octopus like drone's monocular optic switching attention from him towards the hall of gathering.

Arne's eyes were drawn to the building and his head tilted from left to right and back again as he drank in the sights of the building. A dome like structure surrounded by statues of many species, many he did not recognise, many others he knew had not been seen by any living eyes in a very long time. But could the missing or the extinguished be lying in wait like his own adoptive people? Not gone, but simply resting and waiting to be found? But then...how many could that really apply to? Surely many really are gone for good...the thought saddened him so he relinquished it, refusing to hold onto the upsetting idea. He noted that some of the holopathic glyphs written near the Alimbic statue read "To our shared Triumph over those who sought to enslave."

"What was this building made for?" He asked, turning his attention back to the old Mystromagos as she gave a small laugh in that melodious grandmother's voice of hers.

"-That's a very old story Arne. It was old when I was last awake even. But there was a time when we all stood as friends who had vanquished a great and terrible foe together. A war where we learned to master the military art before we swore to push the boundaries of that art no farther. It's a long tale for a long war, and when we make leave for home I will tell you it in full. But for now, let's think less of solemn memorials, and more of getting you some ice cream.-" She said, the magic words making his eyes light up as he just about bolted towards the facility, getting a little laugh out of Elmorni as Ygrak approached her and rested a hand on her shoulder.

"-Do you think we have done rightly by him?-" Ygrak asked.

"-I cannot speak for others, but I believe I have at least.-" She answered.

"-Let's not leave him unsupervised for too long, shall we?-" She asked as she rested a hand against hers as they shared a warm memory through the touch.

"-Of course, come with me.-" She answered as she broke off the gesture.

_Dining Hall, Citadel of Unity_

Samus twiddled her thumbs slightly while she sat at her seat in the dining hall, a sweeping place filled with many tables at many elevations contained within its arching dome, food conjured at the desires of those partaking in this discussion by all those deemed worthy enough to sit at the table. Her yellow armour clad legs swung beneath the decorated table while the elders spoke amongst one another about high minded ideals of politics and philosophy. She was following most of it, but she didn't need to have mastered telepathy to know that there was more than a little heat between the Alimbics and the Chozo. While Zurvduat seemed to agree broadly with Mother Brain on a terrifying number of things, Re-Sekh had little love lost for him. It was interesting enough even if she thought that most of the people here were unfortunately unwilling to involve her in any of the conversations. She had wanted to join in, but there was a sense that Zurvduat was unwilling to speak with her as an equal. Something that made her rather furious actually.

Arne though walked into the room, darting around the various adults to find himself a seat. He wanted something to himself, some time to think alone despite the buzz of all the people around him. He wasn't allowed to leave while the great meeting was going on...but that didn't mean he actually had to put himself in a position to have to talk to anyone. He understood most of it, he just didn't want to be dragged into more talk of his destiny or more of the politics of the Tetrachy or anything of the sort. He knew what he believed in, he wanted to stay true to those convictions, and wasn't in the mood to examine the beliefs of his adoptive people. He slipped past Spire, who had finished conversing with the huntress Svihaly a little earlier, and looked around for some place where he could sit and listen without being focused on too much after getting something to fill his belly. He just so happened to turn his head past some pillars at the right moment.

Then the two locked eyes with each other as Samus' blue eyes flicked away from the arguing elders and towards a negative space in the crowd while he was looking around for food to grab, stepping into that space and turning to see her. The two seemed startled, blinking repeatedly as if they were gazing upon a hallucination. This was the first time either had seen a real live human in person for more than ten years. Samus dropped the fork in her hands and Arne's attempted outreach for the plate of food stopped dead in its tracks.

He thought of something...anything to say, and decided to start with why he was here in the first place.. Food, yes, preferably sweet. "Is this chocolate?" He said, not taking his eyes off of her while she remained similarly transfixed on him. He wasn't sure what to do, so he made a little smile to make her feel a bit more at ease. He really, really liked the hair on her head, and those eyes of hers had him transfixed. Her starstruck expression was cute, and he only hoped that he managed to avoid looking like a surprised fish himself.

For her part, she smiled back at him. His silver-white hair was...exotic. His crimson eyes, opened wide with surprise; were intriguing. His soft smile though? That was endearing. "Yeah that's...chocolate ice cream; why don't you sit down? We can uh...share chocolate yeah?" She said, the young girl raising her eyebrows in interest. She figured that was her best shot of getting him to sit with her and give her someone to talk to that was both her age and easy on her eyes.

Arne looked briefly around, as if he was trying to search for anyone who might object and then nodded. He grabbed the plate before anyone could notice, holding it in his hands and quickly seating himself; sliding it between the two of them as he found himself next to her. He straightened himself out and unconsciously reached a hand for his hair as if to make sure it was all in order before he turned towards her. Her own fingers played around with her tomboyish ponytail, eyes stealing glances towards him as the two waited to see who would be the first to take a piece of the artisanal desert.

"I'm Arne." He said, sitting down, pulling a seat for himself and resting his hands on the table after setting down enough chocolate ice cream for four of people. But he figured that they could do with extra, since he guessed they'd have a nice...long conversation. His mind raced around in circles trying to find something to say. The synaptic feedback systems in his gauntlets reported the sensation of rubbing his fingers together. He was nervous, but it felt like a much better sort of nervous than usual as he hung on her words.

"Samus, Aran. You're not just named Arne are you?" She said. She had always imagined what it would be like to see another human, another kid. A boy, a girl, or anything else...it didn't matter. She'd have loved the sight all the same. But for what it was worth, she felt glad that the first human she saw was him. She eyed the amount he brought over. Enough for four people. She'd have gone for six herself, she had no intention of getting out of this seat anytime soon. Not when she was busy thinking of what to say, something meaningful and from the heart.

"Skjoldr. My surname's...Skjoldr." He said. "It means shie-" He was about to start before she interrupted.

"Shield. And Arne means Eagle, so that makes you the shield of eagles" She said with a nod and smile. "Mine means Explorer of Islands...well, I think that's the nicer translation." She said, laughing a little. He shared in the moment, letting out an honest, heartfelt laugh. It might not have been that funny, but it felt nice to be able to share that sort of moment with another person.

"So Arne, what do you think of this gathering? It's nice to leave home isn't it?"

"Well uh, hrm. I'm not used to all these people being nice to me. Everyone seems so happy to see me and that's...weird but good for me."

He gave a somewhat bashful smile. He was still trying to work on being presentable socially, and he warmed when he saw her returning that smile. It made him feel like she cared about what he had to say, like he did when he was with his mothers. He saw the curiosity in her eyes and tried to figure out what she was thinking. Body language was a learned craft for him, so he focused carefully to make sure he wasn't getting the wrong signals; trusting his conscious senses to do what his instincts were poorly wired for. She was interested in him, and that encouraged him to keep at this conversation during this brief pause.

She was indeed interested. Intrigued even. She examined him, studied him and tried to figure out what he was at a holistic level. Like how did all of his parts fit together into the person sitting across from her? His interest in her also drew her notice. It was a different sort than what she usually received, a child's interest in another. She wanted to pick at this, to find out more and to learn all she could. How very odd it was, she thought to herself, that another person of her own species was such a puzzle to her. And her mind when confronted with this challenge, sought to grab onto it with both hands and pull him in.

"Yeah, it's really exciting to meet all these new people! I love it at home in Zebes, but I want to see the universe I'm supposed to help. I can't keep my wings stuck in a cage forever. I need a chance to stretch them and fly, and well...this is the first time I've ever really done that you know?" She said, her enthusiasm bright like the sun itself. And like a sunflower, his own spark of energy began to unfurl in that radiance.

"I...yeah. I'm really happy to get a chance to leave Sentus. I like seeing all the new people, and it's nice to just...look around and relax and enjoy things. And get to know the cosmos I'm well...expected to protect. And I like that people here all seem to be interested in me. It's validating."

Twice he's talked about how unusual it is for people to express interest in him as a person. That bore investigating, why was that? It didn't make sense to her, how could that possibly be she thought to herself. "But why wouldn't people be happy to see you Arne? I've just met you and I already have so many questions! It's...is it about your parents?" She asked before another name came to her mind. "Is it because of Zurvduat?" She remembered that name and how Old Bird seemed to be apprehensive about it. Was he the one making him feel this way?

And there it was, a brief flash of displeasure. His expression doured and his heart began to dip in his chest. He felt heavy for a moment, but he pushed it to the side. However he looked at her and realised that he wasn't going to be able to lie his way out of it. "...Yeah...I want to impress him, all of them really. Sometimes I don't do as well as I was supposed to and that makes them upset. So I try to be better. I just want them to be proud they adopted me." He said, steeling himself and trying to find comfort in his present situation; offering her a tired smile.

"If he doesn't find you interesting he's an idiot." She said surprisingly bluntly.

"I...what...but he's..." His brain was running in a short circuit right about now as he tried to process the idea of having his image of his second "father" torn down.

"I'm sorry but he's just...wrong!" She put on a face to let him know that this was not a position she was going to budge on.

"I...o...okay." He said. "What about your parents?" A swift if not exactly graceful attempt to redirect the conversation away from something he didn't feel like he was ready to confront.

She saw the attempted redirect a parsec away, but she also knew it wasn't a good idea to pry deeper straight away. He would open up in time. "Well, even the people who didn't think I belonged accept me now. Grey Voice doesn't show it, but he definitely cares for me. Old Bird and August Wing are also really close to me too. There's only one person who doesn't really like me. But I mostly try to ignore her or tell her to shut up." The thought of her made her stomach do twirls and got her to make a brief face. She didn't like to hide how or what she was thinking.

She laid her hand a bit forward, the other one scooping up ice cream with a spoon to funnel into her mouth whenever she wasn't speaking. So close to one of his own. She felt a psychic electricity between the two of them. Like two wireless devices that sensed compatible frequencies and were trying to build a connection. She dared to edge her hand closer, sensing with flashes of the distant sight that this was the right move to make.

He noticed the movement, and the faintest hint of red appeared on his face as he edged his own digits forward. He cleared his throat, trying to avoid seeming too awkward in the present moment. "Is she the A.I you've got floating around? Mother Brain right?" He said, getting a nod in response from her to affirm, redoubled by the gift of his telesense. Flashes of validation and flickers of security. "She's...kind of rude and judgy. I don't think I like her very much. She's just well, not like a good mother at all. Sorry if I'm not doing the word thing very well." He said, trying to breathe and then regather his focus. Okay, words, he can do words, words weren't as hard as his combat exercises.

"What I'm saying is, why is she called Mother Brain if she isn't motherly at all?" He cleared his throat. That was easy enough to say.

She gave it only a moment's thought. She herself wasn't sure of why she was identified as a Mother...mother of what? "Maybe it's like how a motherboard is the heart of a computer? At least that's what I think it is."

He tarried somewhat with scooping out the next bit of ice cream with his spoon. Why was it so much harder to find words to put into his mouth than to know what to do when he was being shot at? The way she waited for him to find something to say encouraged him to stick to it and it was only a second's delay; an eternity in his present state; before he thought of a reply.

"I mean...that sounds reasonable. At least I mean, I think it does. But...well, do you think she deserves it? Being called Mother?"

She paused, she let the thought roll around in her head. Was it something she thought the supercomputer deserved? Just the appellation and all it entailed?

"That's...I'm not sure...Do you think Zurvduat deserves to be called Father?" She knew what she thought on the matter, and she hoped that he felt the same way inside.

"...I...I don't know?"

He looked like he was genuinely lost, his sense of direction upended and his train of thought left to slip its moorings and drift on the sea of thought. Basically, he was fucking stumped.

"Well, um. I. I guess I have doubts?"

"Why?"

She shuffled a little closer to him in the seat, armour plating moving seamlessly as she did so. The tactile sensors of the suit feeding into her body letting her move the spoon in her finger with just as much precision as she could bare handed, even twirling it slightly in her hands as she waited for her answer to that question. A half second passed before she got it.

"He never lets me call him dad."

He frowned and she frowned. That didn't seem right at all. It seemed...sacriligeous. But not completely beyond her ken.

"Mother Brain never lets me call her Mama either."

The idea of a giant cybernetic supercomputer allowing anything to call it "mama" made Arne laugh. And his laugh brought some of her own out of her as the two just about doubled over in a giggling fit. Utterly asinine but hilarious, especially to those not overly familiar with more deft forms of comedy. It took a good ten seconds for the two to calm down, their giggling subsiding before finally cutting off.

"So...uh...what do you like to do when you're not practicing?" She asked, seizing the initiative to speak while he was still breathing. He patted himself on the chest, metal clanking on metal before he cleared his lungs as if that could force the last bit of unnecessary laughter out and calm himself. He gave a thumbs up to let her know that he was good to go, one that she returned almost immediately, beaming at him widely before he straightened himself.

"I mean, I like to study history. Just...go to places people live in or used to and see what it used to be like. I'm also really big on working with machines, it's really neat to take them apart and see what goes into them. But really? I like to fly. When I'm in a cockpit it feels like I can go anywhere and help anyone. And I really want to do that you know, there's a lot of good people in the universe and so many of them are hurting. But I feel like I can help them in this armor and in my ship." He said, glad that he was allowed to speak by her without interruption. Zurvduat and so many of the other Alimbics would always tell him he was losing sight of the real way to bring about peace; through the rebirth of the Empire. He felt appreciated when his word was allowed to be said.

But then why would she interrupt him? He wasn't done talking and had said nothing to warrant a pause in his speech. In fact, she was quite set on hearing out everything that came out of his mouth right about now, so long as he would give her the same courtesy. "Oh, a lot of that's stuff I'm really fond of doing too! But if I can tell you a secret? I like to hike and explore yeah, but I also really like interacting with animals. I also really, really like to read. Fairy tales, adventure stories, and mythology are some of my favourites! Also just about anything that has to do with heroes." She said, giving him a short pause with which to say something, smile undimmed and eyes just a bit brighter than before as she tilted her head.

"Heh...I care for two pet ravens and two mechanoids actually." He said warmly. She looked like someone who kept at least two animals company to him. Probably had taken some animals home that some disapproved of. He'd done the same many times. The way she lit up when he mentioned pets gave it away.

Ahah, something to speak together about! Uncomplicated and pure and simple. "Ahah! I knew you liked animals too. It was...a little hunch heh...but what are their names? I'm friends with Pyonchi and Gexom, a Rabil and a little geckobot, I'd really like for you to meet them!"

"My parents named the ravens Hugin and Munin, I named the mechanoids Geiri and Freki. All four of them should be here...just let me find Hugin and Muni-ahah!" He said, giving a small gesture towards two of the crows perching atop a table being offered a helping of bread by one of the Chozo. Munin gave him a look and tilted their head, tapping their beak slightly before turning back to the bread and opening their mouth widely to wait for the next offering.

"Odin's Ravens and Wolves." She said without a moment of hesitation, nodding in understanding.

"Oh yeah...I was thinking of using the name Valtamr when I start leaving Sentus Primaris. Secret identity you know?" He said, smiling a little sweetly as she tapped her chin.

"Huh, I guess it fits since Alimbics only have one eye...should I have one? Schathach maybe?" She hazarded for a moment.

"I'll have to think about that more." She said, eyes snapping back to him as she shifted a little in her seat.

"That sounds like a really nice name but, I like Samus too." He said, getting her to flush her cheeks slightly at the unexpected compliment. She wasn't sure why, a lot of people said her name was pretty, but so far they had all been far older than she was. Now she was getting it from someone much closer to her in age, a peer. That made it feel...blessed and honored Geshet and the spirits beyond. She regained her composure though and had something in mind to fire back.

"Well, I think Arne's a cute name too." She blurted out which made him flush rather more considerably red than her. He twitched his thumbs together. Great and kind Kereskal and his arkyls grant me the strength to deal with cute girls flirting with me, he thought. Okay, he could do this, words weren't hard to do. He was not going to look like an idiot, he swore to himself as he cleared his thoughts and looked up at her with a bashful smile.

"I mean, yeah. Well...I like to think there's at least two cute things in the room..." He said, making his voice quite small though he noticed her eyebrows shoot towards the roof, the rose hint to her cheek only grew brighter, but he himself was about as red as the primary colour of his homeland's flag. If they kept up this flustration arms race sooner or later they'd have exhausted every shade of red in the book to turn their cheeks into.

"Well, you and me both." She wasn't about to just let him get away with that even if it made her feel a bit heady herself just to say it as the two were met at an impasse. The great stalemate, the great superweapon crisis of one upsmanship and both of their fingers were on all out mutually assured embarrasment. Someone had to back out before they had to deal with the fallout.

"Aheh...well...Maybe we could see if we've read some of the same books?" Keeping the conversation moving and ducking out all in one stroke, smooth as sandpaper. She laughed though, which disarmed him slightly and got him to share a chuckle.

"Sure! I'd love to compare our reading." She said, bringing out some images projected from the orb on the back of her left gauntlet. They'd be at this for a while, so before it might be inconvenient to bring it up..."But afterwards, would you like to have a...more serious talk about more personal stuff?" She asked, taking a glance at him through the hieroglyphs she was projecting.

He gulped, but nodded. "Yeah, I think I can do that." he said.

_Dining Hall, Citadel of Unity, 5 minutes prior_

Re-Sekh had known Zurvduat for all of five minutes and already wished to claw his eye out. He did not even grace him with the courtesy of greeting him even, instead insisting on meeting with the commander of military forces amongst them. And when such was not provided, Zurvduat and the Triumvirate simply deferred conversation to Elmorni and the Tetrarchs. Only after a prolonged bout of bickering debate was he finally forced to relent and give Old Bird the courtesy of returning an open gesture of friendship. The pleasant conversations with Elmorni had caused him to forget why there was a cold war between the Mileu and the Order, Zurvduat's naked contempt for all around him was a reminder in the same way that a hammer blow to the genitals was a reminder one was in a fight.

"Knight-General, I am...honored you have deigned to grant us the courtesy of conversation." Grey Voice said through the most annoyed voice he could muster, the briefest of strains to his usually voice the equivalent of hissing through one's beak and snorting through nostrils in rage for most Chozo. But of course the revered Scholar-Philosopher was a always bird known for being cut from sterner stone than the statues on Zebes. To make such stone crack was a monumental feet that many could never hope to match. Truly, the commander of the Caesarian Lance was gifted in the art of infuriating those near him, Re-Sekh thought.

"-No the Honour is mine.-" Re-Sekh would ordinarily have thought nothing of "the honour is all mine" forms of replies, but out of the General it sounded pompous and condescending. Zurvduat of course, believed it was magnanimous, a gesture of what little respect he could give "-For I am pleased to see that even despite your pitiable present state and your deplorable pacifism, you yet endure.-" A heartfelt compliment in his eye. To endure despite being so pathetic, to live on and witness the resurgence of an Old Empire that would finally bring about peace and order.

"It does us great joy that you would spare a moment of your doubtlessly endlessly valuable time to consort with those you regard as inferiors." Isa-Hesh said as politely as she could manage despite her tremendous annoyance.

August Wings had spent much of her time pointedly looking at the hanging gardens throughout the Dining Hall, counting petals as slowly as her superhuman mind would be able to tolerate while still offering her leave of mind from this encounter. So far she had yet to be able to project out of this conversation and find solace in the sweet void of mental oblivion.

"-And you say this Confederacy sprung up under your watchful eyes? As did these other menaces? The War-Clans, the Star Serenity, the Trusts, the Kriken Empire and other messes you've allowed to grow under your sight? And even this very Federation you supported the foundation of...ninety two cosmic years and what do you have to show for it?-" Osith said, her cold, steely psychic voice accusatory and grating. There was no effort at diplomacy made here, just scorn for the waste of space she saw before her.

"Empires are not built on foundations of peace but death. They are maintained with mortar made of bone, and they are built with bricks of bloody gore. If we were to return to the old ways of Empire and beat the stars into submission would we have truly helped or compounded the woes of the universe with yet further miseries brought about by imperial domination?" Wise old Platinum Crest said, harrumphing as he did so.

"-And yet how much death and strife is created by your inaction? You stand idly by with technology and mystic knowledge that could transform every facet of society while knowing that there are those who could stand to benefit from what you have laboured to build. When our Order conquered, we brought our civilization, our progress and our structure to the places that we conquered.-" Urim said. The Tetrarchs seemed prepared to speak, but were silenced by a hand from Zurvduat.

"-Why have you changed so much in the time since we last saw you? Less than two hundred cosmic years and you have all gone so very, very soft. Why? Why reject the peace that we built together? Did our rivalry mean so much to you? Did you hate our ways so much that you forsake all responsibility to spite us?-" Zurvduat asked pointedly. And it was at this point that Old Bird felt in his bones that he may never make Zurvduat understand his reasoning.

Even worse Iron Heart, Star Strider, and Mother Brain however seemed receptive to the words of the General, though out of respect they remained quiet, focusing their communications entirely in the sphere of the telepathic, a chorus of silent voices speaking where the appointed mouths of two faded empires would speak. He would need to speak decisively.

"In the hundred seventy five and a half cosmic years since we last knew your people, your disappearance had caused a great realization that the quest for domination was akin to building houses on foundations of sand. No matter how sturdy the structure, it would one day sink just as your vassals gnawed at your bones once you had faded. Observing the end of your Order brought no joy to our hearts, but it made us realise that true; lasting peace must be made cooperatively." He said, tilting his head upwards to meet Zurvduat's single eye with both of his own. The General's stare was intense, but his own wizened ancient's glare was no less steadfast.

"-You are a bold bird I will give you that, old man. But when your Federation has already strayed so far from your path while you still cling to this plane of existence, what hope do you have of maintaining your grandiose vision of a realm of everlasting peace and liberty without hierarchy and inequity when you are gone? If we were peoples of flowers, your words would be worth the breath you expend on them. But alas, we do not live in a universe ruled by blossoms, ours is a harsh reality. What a pity then, that you are raising such a fine warrior as that girl under such foppery.-" Zurvduat scoffed.

"I would have thought that people such as you would understand the value and virtue of patience. The road we have laid out is long. But the payment will come soon. And I would have also thought yourself above such base attacks on my parenting methods. And what of your child then? Why has he refused to even look in your direction or call you father?"

"-I don't need a son to coddle and to pamper! I require a knight who will serve as the first sword of order in a cosmos lost to chaos! What will your "daughter" do when she has to make the hard choices to bring about peace in our time hrm? Offer flowers and kisses? Don't make me laugh. I do what is necessary to prepare my squire to do battle and make war, to make him a proper soldier and scholar in this army of civilization. So no, I don't want the human to think of me as a father to kiss his little scrapes better.-"

"And yet when the time comes, I think that you will find that your methods are lacking. Compassion, understanding, and empathy as much as brute power, raw wit, and martial skill to provide the heroes that the cosmos needs. To understand that the best choices to make are not the easy paths of leaving some to burn so some may prosper; but finding a way to bring betterment to all. So that she may bring not simply an end to conflict, but genuine peace and liberty."

"Now, I must insist that you allow us to see what can be done were we to join our forces. With our combined resources, the Hatchling and Neophyte could be a tremendous force for peace and liberation. But we should act sw-" Old Bird was not allowed to finish speaking.

Zurvduat's voice was dripping with venomous contempt for the wizened ancient "-You would have me infect my project with your coddling? You would have me forge a sword without hammering it? Keep your daughter if you wish. The Primoris will not have any of the weakness you gravebound bleeding hearts would seek to pass onto us.-"

"Perhaps it would be best to settle this discussion in methods with a test then? While I would dearly love to address your arguments for the thousandth time, even an old man such as myself must know when to adjust their tactics." He said, adjusting his cane slightly as he stood up. Relatively simple in appearance despite the usual splendour of Chozo artifice. Certainly far less ostentatious than the General's staff weapon. But Old Bird cast himself in the light of a monk, unassuming despite the armour beneath the relatively plain robes. He was not here for theatrics.

"-Tch, I see Elmorni has failed to convince you of my reasonings and ways. Disappointing. But a test you say?-" That got the old General's attention, the chance to prove himself and demonstrate his superiority. A dashing reminder of the conquests and pacifications he once lead in a now long gone era.

"Perhaps to see if your harsh methods have truly produced the steely warrior you claim to be nurturing. If you are so much better than we, why not prove it once and for all? Or are you afraid of showing the flaws in your ideals and your methods?" He said. He hoped to take Arne out of Zurvduat's '"care", and another fresh face upon Zebes would do wonders for the planet. But showing up this arrogant bastard would perhaps teach him some humility.

"-Yes...I see. Such may be all the ammunition I require to make Elmorni and her faction of wallflowers see reason...yes...I see the logic in that now. I will silence the dissent in my ranks and demonstrate the validity of my methods. Primoris, stand firm, I will accept this offer. Let us have trial by combat to settle who here has truly made the most of the time given to us. Then perhaps we will see if your daughter truly is all you say she is.-" He said, looking away as he thought, scarcely noticing that Samus and Arne had approached the table after finishing their conversation, here to ask a question only for Arne to freeze when he realised what was being discussed, Samus looking towards Old Bird with a frown on her face as he rested a hand upon her shoulder.

"Why not ask Arne what he thinks?" Old Bird said, looking down at him as he blearily looked up at him. He was about to form his words, probably saying he'd really rather just relax for now, but he could sense Zurvduat's judgement and gulped. A shaky "y-yeah...I'll do it." Emerged from him after significant internal deliberation after he gave Samus a forlorn look with his tired, bagged eyes. It was not an answer given happily, but it was a necessary answer. He gave Old Bird a look, and Old Bird wavered slightly before looking back to the Alimbic General.

"-Excellent, I will expect the field to be prepared within an hour.-"

* * *

**Consolidated Logbook Entries**

Individuals: Freelancers: Active: Diamond Rank: Uploaded Mechanoids: Unknown Affiliation: Svhilay

Svhilay is the only known operational N'Kren in the explored universe. With the rest of her kind having entered the long sleep for unknown reasons, Svhilay appears to have been dispatched as a caretaker to ensure that no long term threats to the slumbering N'Kren upon their Morphomundi. Svhilay primarily makes use of the Morning Star, which strikes enemies with tremendous crushing and expanding force that simply pulls the targets it strikes apart through catastrophic tensile and compressional force until they either implode or fly apart, with her particular variant of the weapon being able to chain to added targets. Due to her incredible durability thanks to her living metal construction and shielding, her sophark alternate mode, and highly sophisticated overall ability suite; she is considered a huntress with few peers.

Arne's Notes:  
From what I've heard she shoots lasers from her eyes and lightning from her fingers and eats monsters for her breakfast routine. I don't know, I don't think she eats breakfast.

Samus' Notes:  
I don't think I believe half the things said about her, but I'm very interested in seeing if they're true!

Species: Precursor: Extant: Dormant: Uploaded Mechanoids: N'Kren

The N'Kren were once a species of Germanium based life forms that would later upload themselves into mechanical bodies to transcend the limitations of their metallic flesh. They had mastered much of the physical sciences across their immensely long history even before they had discovered faster than light travel. Spreading from their power base in the Comet Galaxy, the N'Kren would come to encounter many societies such as the Chozo, the Alimbics, the Luminoth, the Ylla and later more primitive cultures such as the Bryyonians. The N'Kren Metallion would span across a considerable space and endure for more than two thousand cosmic years until the N'Kren decided to begin sleeping out of discontentment for the present state of the universe, hoping that one day there would be a better tomorrow for the cosmos. Known for their incredible technology as well as the lethality of their defenses prepared to ensure that would be tomb raiders are destroyed before they can disturb what they shouldn't, many colonies have been developed atop N'Kren Morphomundi only to be chased away by the defense drones when mining efforts begin.

Arne's Notes:

I remember stories some of the people on Cylosis would tell of what happened to revolutionary cells that tried to dig too deep into Morphomundi to establish bunkers. Not very pleasant stories.

Samus' Notes:

I really am not comfortable with the idea of uploading into a machine. It feels like sacrilege, but I'll stand by this. I just hope I never have to meet anyone I'm really tied with who uploads...I don't know how I'd feel.

Planets: Black Eye Galaxy: Argent Nebula: Human Habitable: Precursor Gathering Place: Visited: Arganti

An artificial planet constructed roughly three hundred sixty thousand years ago, Arganti served as one of the primary meeting places of the Sophont Commonwealth. A great community of many ancient and wise species required an equally great hub, and Arganti was designed to impress. While smaller than some other megastructures, the Jupiter sized world was once home to untold numbers of sophonts of countless species and regularly processed even more visitors. But as the members of the Sophont Commonwealth gradually disappeared one by one Arganti would gradually become abandoned and emptied of its guests and residents. With the decline of the Chojinzuko Milieu, Arganti fell into its terminal state and became an empty world. Now, Arganti is unable to be visited as the drones guarding it refuse to recognise most of the extant civilisations as having attainted the level of sophistication needed to

Arne's Notes:

I'm really interested in the engineering work that went into the city's design. It's...very fascinating to me how they managed to address the problems of housing species with so many different needs and all the traffic to and from the planet. Kind of sad that it's empty and no one can appreciate it though.

Samus' Notes:

The architecture on the planet is just so fascinating! The way they combine styles into a seamless blend and make sure it fits into the city planning sketched out for so many species. Ugh, I wish I could talk to some of the designers. Too bad I'll never get the chance, I wish I had a time machine, so many people I could meet!

Organizations: Extinct: Precursor: Sophont Commonwealth

Once a grand international congress of countless species that had grown to know and bond with one another, the Sophont Commonwealth was a testament to international unity to spread across tens of billions of light years. The Commonwealth was regarded as the bastion of understanding and reason, and served as the mediator for disputes for thousands of years as technology and understanding advanced ever farther and ever faster. After hundreds of thousands of years of general peace, the Commonwealth would face a grand test in the form of a tremendous war against a foe known by many epithets but whose true name seemed to be regarded as cursed, something to not be spoken of aloud. Eventually proclaiming victory, the Commonwealth would gradually splinter as the Tetrarch Order and Cojinzuko Milieu split over increasingly irreconcilable difficulties. It was declared defunct roughly a thousand years before the foundation of the Galactic Federation which was intended to be its successor.

Arne's Notes:

I really wish I could have seen it when it was in existence you know? It must have been an amazing thing while it was around. Just imagine all the people who lived better because of it! But...why would the Chozo replace it with anything like the Federation. They had to be better than this.

Samus' Notes:It's inspiring really! That what we had before was something so wonderful. How many wars did it stop? How many people were helped by it while it was around? Maybe one day the Federation can become something like it? Maybe I'll even help it get there.

Individuals: Alive: Human (Hybrid): Federation: Civilian: Freelance: Samus Aran (Part 2)

Following her adoption into the remnants of the Chojinzuko Milieu by Re-Sekh's population of Chozo against the recommendation of Somek-Ka, Samus Aran was genetically augmented with Chozo DNA to massively improve every aspect of her physiology, in essence making her almost a Chozo warrior-scholar in a human body. She also demonstrates a number of latent psionic and mystic abilities, such as the Distant sight. Samus is highly favoured by most of the Chozo although some question the wisdom of bringing her onto the planet and involving her in their affairs. Though she is well loved, she remains eager to leave Zebes and explore the universe.

Arne's Notes:

She's got such a nice smile and an incredible energy. Hahah, I'm...kind of jealous actually. But I think we can be great friends. I just feel like we can talk about anything and we'll understand each other? And that's something I really want.

Samus' Notes:

I'm hoping that soon I'll be able to start and just never stop! See every place I've ever wanted, explore all the most interesting places! Save people, make the universe a better place! Soon, I'll be able to reach above the sky...I'm going to grab at that chance above it.

Individuals: Civilian: ODOCR Citizen: Uskarling: Clan Grendakal: Human: Male: Arne Skjǫldr (Part 2)

After being adopted into the remains of the Tetrarch Order by Zurvduat on recommendation of Elmorni, Arne Skjoldr would be infused with the abilities of Alimbic DNA to augment him to levels matching that of Alimbic knights both mentally and physically. This has also come with a number of more esoteric augmentations as part of the bargain due to his psychic and mystic awakening. Arne is sometimes noted to have mood swings and a tendency to try and avoid direct conflict with most of his Alimbic caretakers, whom seem highly mixed on their opinions of him at best. He has a significant deal of anxiety about leaving Sentus Primaris, more particularly the wait to do so.

Arne's Notes:

I feel kind of glum and pensive lately. I don't know why but I have a lot of...complicated feelings about starting to go off planet, or even if I'll be allowed to do it more. I'm glad Elmorni and her faction listen though. And I hope I can find new people to talk to.

Samus' Notes:

He's such a sweet boy, but he looks so tired and lonely sometimes. I really want to try making friends with him, because I think that we can understand each other really well. And I think we both want that. Maybe I can even take him on an adventure?


	12. Forlorn: DIscordia (AS & SA)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A tempest tossed bond between Arne and Samus is solidified even despite the best efforts of Mother Brain and Zurvduat.

_Elegsar Plateau, Arganti_

Samus approached a young man as he sat melancholically at the end of a cliff. A hand flick from him tossed a stone into the distance, sailing far out of sight and disappearing beyond what any normal human eyes could hope to perceive with the whipcrack of a sound barrier issuing its protests. She didn't need her gift of distant sight to know that he was in a troubled mood.  
  
"I expected you were coming..." He said, a tired sigh coming from him as she slid down next to him, yellow boots encasing the feet she slid over the cliff side while a hand of hers rested on the cliff behind her. Her helmeted head turned towards him, and then looked out to see what he saw.  
  
A vast, open expanse in the mesa park, a stretch of wildlife in the city that surrounded them; distant spiralling towers reminding her of the illusory nature of this wilderness. It made her feel somewhat hollow, the beauty of nature interrupted by the looming sight of admittedly; also wondrously sculpted cityscape. She thought briefly of how it could be made to fit together more harmoniously, but remembered why she had come.  
  
"What's bothering you?" She asked.  
  
"What are your combat skills?" A question in response to a request. She saw his hand on the cliff face, rock crumbling in his grip before fragmenting entirely. He was breathing normally, perhaps too much so. He was forcing himself to appear to be calm, to not express weakness. To be strong and steady. He was failing, and so all he had left to go on was training.  
  
"Are you worried about the fight?" She knew where this was going as he started to teeter a bit on the surface he was on. His breath hitched and legs restless as he stared into the sunset.  
  
"Please...I need to know, I need to prepare I need to..." He stopped as he looked at his cannon and then at her before looking straight out again. "I need to...should I win? Would that be good? I..." He looked at his left hand now, crumbled stone in his hands that blew away with a breeze. He closed his eyes and sighed.  
  
"It's okay to be worried about the future Arne. Is that what's got you acting like this?" She said. She'd seen this sort of clamming up before, she'd done it sometimes too. And truth be told...she wasn't looking forward to this fight either. It felt obscene. All this over some stupid wager. All this for...she was sure Old Bird had a plan but she struggled to perceive it. Her mind's eyes could not reach as far as the ancient's.  
  
"I know one thousand and twenty five forms of combat, I've memorised one thousand one hundred and eleven courses, and I don't know what to do. What's your secret huh? Why is it so easy for you? How are you so confident...do you have a plan? Some secret weapon? Some loadout I don't know about?" He was in a mental rut. An ingenius mind stuck constantly running over possible scenarios and possible outcomes that all seemed to be bad.  
  
"Because it's how I was raised Arne. You don't need to think of yourself like a tool. You're more than just a sword. Like me, I like to do..." She paused, how to phrase it? "Research, I like to study and learn. To find something nobody else has seen before, or nobody has seen in a long time. I also like to see other people's experiences, new ones or old ones. You can learn a lot about people when sit down with them. Like we're doing right now actually! You know, why not talk about stuff like that? We were doing alright back when we were sharing ice cream." She asked, tilting her head at him, wondering what he was thinking behind that helmet.  
  
"I..I am a sword, a lance, and a shield. I am a scholar of the ways of the wise, an engineer to bring structure where there isn't, I am a Knight to destroy the dark of chaos, a squire in service of order, a page preparing for a war...a..." He stopped himself, no no stupid dumb dumb _stupid_. Why would he say such stupid things, that's not what she asked? Why couldn't he just say things right? Why was this so hard?  
  
"Arne, please, stop." His words were upsetting. Mother Brain called her things like that and she hated every second of it. To be an item, an object for someone else's agenda. A _thing_. He was calling himself an item, a job title, a servant. She steeled herself, she knew what she had to do. What she had to address.  
  
"I'm...sorry, Samus." He said weakly.  
  
"Arne, you don't need to apologise. It's okay. But you're letting yourself get caught up in your fears and worries. Just...think of something you want to say. Not what your father told you to."  
  
"I'm...if I don't win this he's going to be so mad with me. I just want to make him proud and call me his son for once." He said, then deciding to try to take up the offensive and strike while the proverbial iron was still hot.  
  
"What are you going to bring to the fight?" He said.  
  
"Arne, you're fixating." Her voice was now one of deepset concern. Without the reassuring presence of peers to Zurvduat he was clearly not in the best headspace. She thought about it for a brief moment. He was too clever to be fooled by an obvious lie, too needing of that answer to accept an evasion. But she calculated in a process that was over in less than a second. Alright, she'd give him something to get something in return. She was curious, she needed to know. She needed to pry and see what was it that was bothering him so much. Pain was an old, unwelcome adversary of hers, but she couldn't bear to see someone else in its embrace. Not when she was right there to offer help. It was what her parents; both sets of them; would have wanted.  
  
"I...I know, Samus. But please, can you tell me?" There was the plea.  
  
She weighed her options. "If I tell you, can I ask you something?" There was the bargain.  
  
"Okay, just...give me something to give me some peace of mind." He said.  
  
"Just check the datafile I'm about to send you. It's shorter than the full explanation." He spared a thought to analysing the information being filtered into his memory. Missiles, Super Missiles, Power Beam, Long Beam, Ice Beam, Paralyctor, High Jump, Power Blade, Extension Blade, Grapple Beams, Morph Ball, Bombs, Spider-Ball...it was quite the impressive arsenal indeed. His own was largely equivalent, save for his preference for the Shock Coil and Star Beam. Ice and Lightning vs Lightning and Fire, curious. Yes, yes he could see what he'd have to do. He'd need to avoid her ability to immobilise him, probably countering the Ice Beam with the Star Beam. He figured that charging his missiles could at least give him a counter to the super missiles...yes...he was seeing the basis of a plan of action now.  
  
Something to keep himself busy with thinking about. He could try to bury his state of mind beneath the comfort of thinking of the world in terms of threats to analyse and improve counters against. He could work with this, he could devise a plan and work on some sort of strategem. But he also knew that he was running away from something more pertinent. A cowardly thing to do to be sure. His stomach twisted at the thought, he couldn't be afraid. He wouldn't be afraid. He'd be brave, he'd be strong.  
  
"Okay...quite the arsenal there." He said mostly to himself, but she wasn't about to let him get too lost in his thoughts of conflict. Especially when it was one that she could plainly see he was struggling with whether he even wanted to participate in.  
  
"Now...can I ask you something?" There was the question he was afraid of answering. He felt his hairs stand up on end in his zero suit and his fingers fidgeted within the armour he wore. He almost felt cornered, but he swallowed his pride and looked straight ahead. His face was hidden by his helmet, but he felt like she could still read his expression somehow. It was an irrational fear to be sure, but it wasn't one he could shake off.  
  
"Do you like living with your family?" She asked, letting the pin drop. "You can be honest here." She needed to her what he really thought for herself, without the filter of his father's gaze. She relaxed herself to make her question as clearly spoken as possible. She had no want for him to confuse her meaning even as she could feel the threads of his distant sight start to entangle around hers, but as she had also been trying to sneak glimpses of possible otherwhens, she was able to call his attention with a hand on his shoulder. She felt the contours of the armour beneath her metal covered fingers and tried to gauge her own feelings. Why was she doing this?  
  
Because she found him attractive? No, she did, he was definitely very handsome. But that wasn't it. He was an orphan too, he never said it out loud but it was clear that someone who was left far more alone in the world than anyone should be. If she wanted to be the bringer of freedom; someone who not only rid the Universe of the likes of Ridley but also helped people to be free from want, need, fear, and oppression; how could she even begin to claim such a lofty title for herself if she couldn't even help this one kindred soul? If she could make him feel better about himself, help his situation out at all, she'd be well on her way to proving that yes, she could be one who could change things for the better.  
  
"I..." He gave that question a long thought. Did he? Was the fact that was even a question speaking of something...less than ideal? "I don't know. Do you?" He sighed, slouching forward before turning his head towards her and letting his helmet dissipate into blue light. She matched the gesture herself afterwards, yellow light consuming her helmet as the two looked into each other's eyes. She was so pretty...if she cared this much for him, were Zurvduat's words about his lack of worth true? When a complete stranger was showing this much care for him. He smiled despite himself and all the confusion running around in his head.  
  
"I love my family obviously! It'd be nice to have both sets...but I love being with them. I'm still excited to see the universe but I think Zebes will always be a place I can go back to and call home you know?" She beamed, every word that she said was the honest truth. She missed Virginia and Rodney to be sure, but she also loved her current family. They who had taken her in as one of their own and had loved and cared for her and brushed away all her tears and whispered the nightmares away. What could it possibly be like to have seen what she had seen only to be left to cry until your tear ducts were empty?  
  
"But, if you're not sure if you even like being with your family, can it be a good one? You're going to go outside of Sentus soon right?" She asked, her expression softening as she looked him in the eyes and gave him a friendly, warm smile that made him feel like he was melting. Security was an odd feeling for him, but he grabbed onto it as tightly as he could. She, for her part thought it'd be best to put on a friendly, relaxed expression, one that would show that she was someone that one could take faith it, that she was someone you could look to and know that you were safe with.  
  
"I'll be leaving Zebes to see the universe soon myself. It's...going to be a big change but I think I'll be in good hands. What about you?" She kept on going a little longer, sensing he was still trying to formulate a response and taking the opportunity to speak of herself a little. Truth be told, she wasn't entirely sure which direction she was going to go with that big step next year after her thirteenth birthday. So many options she could go with...but enough of that, she thought. Her attentions drifted back to the boy in front of her, her senses telling her that he was about to give her his response.  
  
"I...Zurvduat and Elmorni both want me to do fieldwork. But they can't agree on whether I should only serve the Tetrarchy or if I should reconnect with my people." He said.  
  
"Well...you can start on that now if you'd like? Maybe...stow the weapon talk for now though?" She said, giving him an encouraging smile.  
  
"Yeah...you also have to start on reconnecting anyway. Let's, go and do that now. We've got time." He said, returning the expression more earnestly.

_War Nest Arena, Arganti_

  
Samus and Arne stood apart from one another, separated by a scant few hundred meters in a battlefield currently shifted into a forest by the machinery of the ancient stadium. Both were busy steeling themselves for what was to come. Arne checked his arm cannon while Samus calmly meditated in her standing position. This would be their first real test against a true equal, and their latent psychic and mystic gifts were busy trying to size the other up in tandem with their keen minds and armoursuit computers. Both would do their best despite their reluctance to indulge Zurvduat in his obsession to prove his superiority. Both knew the stakes, one hoped to prove the General wrong, one hoped to earn his grace.  
  
"You will find that we have trained our pupil well, even if she retains much of her human softness." Grey Voice said, laying his gauntleted hands atop a rest offered in the viewing chambers of the stadium, above the action that was to take place in the pit below.  
  
"-And yet here you are insisting on all weaponry being set to nonlethal. Don't speak to us about how steely you are.-" Osith scoffed, the telepathic voice of the orange Alimbic scornful even to one of the few Chozo she genuinely respected to any great degree.  
  
"I am merely suggesting that perhaps you should correct your arrogance. It is rather unbecoming of you to presume triumph is already yours when speaking to peers." Somek-Ka said, a small chirp of annoyance coming from his beak.  
  
"-The Hatchling should preform adequetely. Optimal preformance will doubtlessly be unattainable due to a refusal to properly mould her. But she should prove the superior to the Primoris doubtlessly, I had a personal hand in the crafting of her armour after all. Anything less would reflect poorly on me.-" Mother Brain said, the droning of her psychic voice heavy on the minds of all those who heard it. For all her pretenses to rationality, the armour of contempt was thick on this one.  
  
"-Perhaps we would do best to not speculate on the outcome before it happens?-" The Palatine Mind was a much more pleasant feeling A.I. His tone warm and his psychic presence far less suffocating than Mother Brain's. But then, he was also a significantly less overbearingly potent A.I. His mind didn't exert the same kind of crushing abyssal pressure every time he spoke, and he certainly lacked the cold calculating malice of the next person to speak.  
  
"-Are we finished tarrying? I have wish to see if my efforts have been in vain. Inform them that they are to begin.-" Zurvduat said, folding his arms as he floated above the air.  
  
"Give them a little time to share some words before you do your best to drive a wedge into their friendship." Old Bird said, adjusting his clawed hands' grip on his cane with the briefest bit of nervousness. He had a plan, but despite his distant sight he was afraid of what may happen to his daughter. He made his benedictions, imploring the spirits to guard Samus from harm in this trial.  
  
"I would rather wish we had not decided to indulge in this preening at all." August Wing cawed in disappointment.  
  
"-Patience, Isa-Hesh. This too will pass in time.-" Elmorni said, her singular eye looking upon her son with trepidation. She could only hope that he would not be hurt by what was to come. She gave the briefest prayer to a deity that most Alimbics dismissed as superstition long ago. A plea to see to her child's safety so that he could get through this storm without harm.  
  
On the fields though, the two looked upon each other. They were full of doubt of course. Neither had wanted this, but there was an obligation to do so. Even with the promise that all weapons would be nonlethal, the thought of so openly attacking each other rubbed them the wrong way.  
  
"Are you sure you're ready?" Arne asked. His voice cracked slightly as he spoke.  
  
"This is crazy, but I'm as ready as I'll ever be."  
  
"-You are to begin immediately. No lethal maneuvres will be tolerated, the victor will be the first to reduce the other's shield energy to zero. Upon which the loser's armour will deactivate immediately. Is this understood?-" Mother Brain commanded, getting a nod from both of them.  
  
Arne and Samus both were of the same mind, opening with a missile as they started to sprint towards each other, the wind whistling and then going inaudible as they jockeyed for advantage. The round tipped missile of Samus slamming into the conical head of Arne's missile in a great thunderclap and fireball, force magnifying fields and shaped charges creating a most peculiar self reverberating explosion. Two other missile shots from both each slammed into each other with much the same end result.  
  
Samus blinked and Arne was on her, pushing through the dust kicked up by the explosion while she made a step back and dug her heel in, swinging her cannon like a mace to disrupt his momentum. He side stepped and stabbed the power blade on his left hand towards her, letting it slip out of his vambrace and drive towards her, giving her a hundredth of a second to react. Thinking quickly, she brought up her own blade and skidded it to the left until they both met with each other's gauntlet guards to prevent it from coming into contact with her. She tried to bring her arm cannon around to his head, only for him to bush back with his own. Try as she might, neither had enough of an advantage in strength to break this deadlock even as the dirt beneath their boots began to give way.  
  
"Not going to take it easy on me are you?" Samus said with an excitable grin written all over her face beneath her helmet.  
  
"You know I can't do that." He said, huffing a bit beneath his helmet.  
  
"Good, because I want you at your best." She said with a grin before swinging her head down and then shoving forward to throw him off his balance, knocking him to the ground where she immediately froze a hand of his to the ground with the ice beam. He sensed that if he strained free she'd just refreeze the limb even in the decisecond it'd take for him to shatter the meter thick ice that encased his arm, and instead tucked in his legs into his chest and curled into the psycho-sphere, hovering over the ground and releasing a blue-white burst of energy that pushed her back.  
  
"Can't let you have it that easy." He said while she curled into the morph ball herself; letting her spherical form start to glow. She knew he was going to tell exactly what she was planning to do. She in fact counted on it, smiling in her disembodied form as he also charged up his kinetic booster. The two made a thunderclap as they slammed into each other with enough force to splinter nearby trees, sending them flying apart at the sort of incredible speeds where the world would become all a blur to the average person. But Samus had a plan, rolling across a ramp that went near vertical that lay behind her to get an elevation advantage and releasing a second boost while she was air born to take her directly over Arne.  
  
As Arne and Samus both unmorphed in flashes of light, her cannon clicked and expanded to ready itself to fire projectiles to give him something to dodge before shifting to a yellow-orange set of highlights as she activated her subweapon. One, two, three missiles to bombard the boy. But Arne was not a passive target, and he had already sussed out her choice of weapon from the conduits of destiny. He tensed himself and exploded into action, sidestepping at the crucial moment and extending his hand, he caught the first missile and tossed it into the second after redirecting its momentum with a quick twist. But he had underestimated just how soon the visions of Samus firing the paralyctor would become relevant.  
  
A more potent version of the weapon her back-up pistol used, the Paralyctor's yellow-orange globules of electrified plasma surged through his shielding and made him feel as if a vise was engulfing him as a red sheen of paralytic energy covered him. Enough to stop him from intercepting the next missile that shoved him back. Follow up shots further hammered at his shielding and locked him down. He gritted his teeth and strained at the paralysing energies until they shattered like ice, breaking restraints that would have trivially held every Tyrannosaurus in Hells' Creek combined and pushed his heels into the ground to stop himself from skidding farther than he had to, deep furrows torn into the ground and the screams of a protesting earth fading into the distance.  
  
He saw her land and felt her next course of attack; one he wouldn't let her finish. She had expected the Shock Coil, far too many of the pathways of fate made it clear that it was one of his go to tools, but he was quick with the left gauntlet grapple beam to limit her movement, boxing her in with the threat of using the shock coil and ducking under a missile of hers as she tried to prepare a charged ice beam shot. His cannon lashed out with blue-white lightning and engulfed her with streams of particles and energy that not only worked their way through her shielding alarmingly fast, but also were recharging his own at frightful speeds. Then the ramp up hit and she knew she had to break free.  
  
She couldn't get away, the grapple beam made sure of that. But she could get close. She shot off her own left hand grapple beam and dumped the charge shot's energy into her suit for a charge tackle and grinned as she threw herself at him, relishing the knowledge that he'd cut himself off from most escape as hurtled towards him like a cannonball. The whipcrack sound of two armoured bodies slamming into each other and the charge shot's energy dumping into his suit to really rattle him onto a knee, the two of them dropping their grapple beam tethers at more or less the same time while she straightened herself up.  
  
She prepared the Imperialist, letting her cannon click red as she layed it at his helmet. Should be enough to signal the end of the fight she thought, then maybe his father would see just how wrong he was to treat him like this, when all his harshness and all his discipline wasn't able to give him a victory. But Arne shared something with her, something deeply ingrained into both of their psyches. He was as stubborn as a herd of mules, especially when Zurvduat's approval was at stake.  
  
He breathed and looked up at her with a quizzical expression, not of what she was doing, but why she thought it'd be that easy. "Not done yet." He said as the two focused briefly; their shielding recharging with a quick bout of meditation. The universe seemed to pause and halt, and all thoughts seemed to fade away save for the island of stability. He shoved his hand in front of the cannon and grunted as the laser slammed home into the gauntlet and slammed his own cannon into her chest to start draining her with the shock coil. She swept at his feet, throwing him off his balance and letting her pull him into a headbutt with a loud crack before he brought out his blade and sliced it at her shoulder, shields sparking to life and making her stagger to the left.  
  
Frustration burned in her and she let out a yell as she tackled him with enough force to create a shockwave that tore across the room and began to repeatedly slam her cannon into him, each impact letting out a missile and getting him to grunt. She felt that damnable shock coil get to work on her once again, the tingling feedback of electrical energy writhing like serpents in her mind. So she spun around and threw him off. Her cannon clicked twice, a super missile emerged that he dodged with a quick spin induced by thrusters on the back of his suit, the second being avoided by twisting his body, and the third hitting him in the chest and throwing him clear across the arena.  
  
The deafening thunderclap of the explosive and its blinding fireball were accompanied by the thunderstorm like rumble of the earth in response to the impact as he grabbed at a branch while he went through the air. The tree tore apart down to its nearly final root, but he arrested his momentum enough to shake his head and get his bearings. Where was she? He thought before his senses told him of the incoming laser, prompting him to curl into the psychosphere and dodge downwards before the ruby light of the imperialist struck him. His hovering alternate mode let him dodge around two more shots before he uncurled and let loose a barrage with the Imperialist himself; one, two, three shots. No dice.  
  
His cannon clicked and widened while it filled with an orange-red light, and blazing comet like projectiles streaked out of his cannon. Burning miniature stars all primed to undergo micronova on impact, exploding with enough concussive force to bowl over forestry and enough heat to fill the air with vapourised earth. She responded with return fire from her cannon, icy globs of the bitterest near absolute zero cold stilling the roaring nuclear furnaces of his star beam with each counter impact. The sudden temperature shock produced potent blasts as hot and cold neutralised one another, leaving the two at an impasse as they traded hundreds of shots and jockeyed for position, devouring hundreds of meters in every possible direction over the space of a few seconds.  
  
This was going nowhere fast. She could feel that they were at an impasse; far too evenly matched for one to gain a substantial advantage over the other. She caught him with a charged shot that plowed through the screen of four star beam shots he had set up, engulfing him in an instant iceberg. She clenched her fist and focused, letting her psychic connection to this projection of her will and soul restore its shielding strength and resupply it with munitions. Her arm cannon clicked with fresh missiles called up by her thoughts and she prepared a super missile to end it, but he exploded out of the icy prison with a powerful outward flexing motion; breaking the cage he had been surrounded with while he charged up a beam of his own.  
  
He saw the incoming missile scream towards him. His suit interpreting the air's vibration through electromagnetic analysis as sound for his ears to help him orient himself while he let his psychic senses get to work. He ducked slightly and swung the extended purple blade to sever the missile's warhead from its rockets and used the explosion to boost him as he jumped towards her. Clean, efficient, quick, just as his adoptive father had taught him to do so many times before. He banished the doubt in his mind, focusing on the task he was given. Easy enough to do when she was a distant foe encased in armour.  
  
She decided to meet him head on, curling into the morph ball and rolling forward like thunder. Orange energy enshrouded her spherical form like a compass as she launched forward, altering her momentum with a spring hop to shove her ball like body up and then uncurl to bring her own power blade at him. She had to win this, not just to prove that Old Bird's ways were better, or to save him, but to show herself that she could triumph over even the greatest of adversity. If she could show that she could do this, then she could overcome the pirates, overcome Ridley, and the people who held his leash.  
  
The two's blades clashed with a resounding supersonic clang and shockwave clap before they pushed off each other, leading to them landing on the ground with heavy thuds and splintered earth beneath their boots tearing upwards. She shot first, letting out a charged Ice Beam shot that he intercepted with the solar flare of the star beam's charge shot. The two's collision; hot and cold; summer and winter; blue and orange; made for a powerful thunderclap that pushed its progenitors back. But only a fool would have thought that such was enough to keep the two children apart. Before the dust had even had a chance to drift downwards, the two had charged back at each other, limbs coursing with power.  
  
Though they were but twelve, the grace and technique behind their every swing would have surpassed that of many ancients. Left, right, parry, thrust, fire, avoid, counter, tackle. It was a furious dance that took place far too quickly for unaugmented human eyes to keep track of. Every motion and movement predicted and countered before it was made. It was not battle fury, it was a sort of hyperfixation where every single movement and motion seemed to be more crystal clear and real than anything in their lives. It was exciting, a rush more intense than anything they could have imagined before. And it was a frightful sort of flow, the perfect acclimitzation to a fight.  
  
Another clash that the two leaned in before throwing themselves back, a strike going across her head from his arm cannon to set her up for a knee to the gut with more force than railguns. A shoulder rush that pushed him back like a bomb blast followed by a blow to his chest from the power blade. A twisting motion to grab her in a headlock before she could pull herself followed by the twisting motions of an overhead throw that smashed her into the ground with enough force to splinter the ground like an earthquake before he moved to stab his blade into the ground, a blow she stopped with a sweep of the power blade and a spin of her legs to throw him to the ground. He caught himself with a hand and shot her in the chest with the star beam to launch her away; she shot out the blue tendril of the grapple beam to yank him with her.  
  
All that in just one of the moments of this furious clash of two allied turned rival warrior traditions. Like two lightning bolts dueling more than two people.  
  
But eventually it had to come to an end as the two slammed into one another one last time and tried to wrestle each other into the ground. Neither wanted to give in, wanting to prove something to themselves and others. The two slammed their arm cannons into each other's chests and let them click. His cannon hummed with a charge, hers expanded to call up a super missile. The resulting explosion was enough to tick their simulated energy counts to zero, forcibly disabling their armoursuits to mark them both as "out" of the fight as they were thrown back from the fireblossom that had resulted.  
  
Samus' two tone blue zero suit and its hood still enveloped her body, keeping her safe as its shielding stood with the full load out of energy tanks. Eyes beneath the hood blinked and she realised she was rocketing backwards at supersonic speeds. She recovered and extended a hand to catch herself on a tree branch, the young girl spinning herself on it like a gymnast to exhaust her momentum and release before the bending tree could snap apart, dropping to the grounds on the flat soles of her boots. She let down the hood of the lightly armoured flexible jump suit and looked around, her blue eyes seeing the world unassisted and her expression one of curiosity. She immediately scanned around for Arne, hoping he wasn't hurt, that last blow had a lot of force to it and she wanted to make sure he was safe.  
  
Arne's black and red zero suit shielded him from any of the pain of the impact of smashing through a dozen or so trees. He had been a bit closer to the ground zero of the impact and so had taken more of the brunt. But he managed to catch his fingers on the ground and drag his momentum to a halt by digging through before he finally flopped waist first into the ground. The stunt did cost him some energy though, and he wearily flopped onto his back, groaning slightly before he opened his hood where he saw Samus standing in front of him offering a hand. He looked upon her and realised she had changed drastically in appearance and then blushed upon seeing how much more...snug it was. Though she certainly appreciated the musculature like shaping of his zero suit as he caught her with a rose tint to her cheeks when their eyes met.  
  
"...Is that a-" He said before she cut him off.  
  
"A draw yeah. Are you alright Arne?" She asked, her expression turning to one of concern as she pulled him onto his feet. She checked over him once and nodded; he was fine.  
  
"Yeah. I've been hit a lot harder then that before." He said with a chuckle as straightened himself. But the impending sensation of an incoming teleport caused a sinking feeling in his heart as he caught wind of the psychic presence of Zurvduat after the two had been forcibly teleported into the viewing chamber with the strange green flash of Alimbic spacewarping technology. And his face paled when he saw that single baleful eye glaring at him with all the burning heat of the desert sun.

"Are you hurt Samus?" Old Bird said, brushing his hand through her golden tresses and getting a smile out of her. He looked her over, and an exhale of audible relief escaped his beak when he saw that she had not a scratch upon her. A sight that voided his ancient heart of tension and worry that seemed to escape from his mouth with his breath.  
  
"I'm fine papa, the armour did what it was supposed to." She said, gently rubbing into his hand and embracing him in a hug that was soon joined by other Chozo such as Isa-Hesh, War Hawk, Platinum Crest and others who had taken interest in her care and welfare. She felt warm and loved, and her arms wrapped around her family. Even stern Grey Voice had not given her his usual put downs to try and clip the wings of her ego. Which to her meant that he must have not had any real complaints. A small victory, but one she would take all the same. "How'd I do?" She asked anyway.  
  
"You did excellently, Samus. We are so proud of you." Isa-Hesh said warmly, trilling happily at the girl entrusted to the charge of the Zebesian Chozo. Samus beamed at her, all of them really. It made her feel so nice to have her family's approval and support. Even when she didn't get a clean victory, she felt like a winner all the same. But she wanted to hear it from old Grey Voice.  
  
"I'll admit, you preformed beyond my expectations in the face of a peer adversary. For that, I give you congratulations. But there is still room for improvement. We must not rest on our laurels if we wish to proceed with our great work." He said, giving her a simple nod of appreciation that meant the world to her as Old Bird scooped her up onto his shoulders.  
  
"We can think of such things later, but for now I think you've earned a moment in the sun." Old Bird said with a gentle laugh as he let her pet at his head and stroke her fingers through his purple feathers by dismissing his helm. A laugh was shared, warm and affectionate and heads were nuzzled together as she kissed him on the beak. She looked to Grey Voice and offered him a hug as well after turning away from Re-Sekh, but he raised a hand and shook his head.  
  
She frowned slightly. "Come on...just this once Somek." She said, her expression turning to a warmer smile to try and entice him. And eventually he briefly let go of his attachment to his visage of stoicism and gave her what she wanted, however much in rankled on the inside for him. His hug was brief, and he pulled away shortly but she still maintained a cheshire grin. He had finally given her the sort of physical affection she had wanted from him in public and that was worth a thousand words out of his beak.  
  
"You will both go on to do great things, I'm sure of it." War Hawk said, humming happily as she gave Samus a headpat as soon as she was let down from the lofty perch of Old Bird's shoulders. She was young by Chozo standards, not too far removed from Samus in terms of physical age; having just barely begun adulthood. The older sister that Samus never really had who was always quick to lavish her in praise and approval. She was such a _cool_ person.  
  
"Thank you, I'll make you proud." Samus said, beaming at her and giving her a thumbs up to accompany that wide pearly white smile of hers, adjusting her pony tail with a single hand motion once War Hawk's hand was retracted from its position on her head.  
  
"Of that, there can be no doubt, Samus. Yours is a star that will shine brightly, and you have learned so much so quickly. Many of our own pupils in our younger years could not have done as well as you have." Old Bird said, laughing gently as he rested both of his hands atop his cane. He then looked over to Iron Heart and Star Strider, keenly interested in what they might have to say.  
  
"I would have liked a clean victory, but I will take what I can get. For what it's worth, you have my congratulations. You'll soon have learned all that can be usefully taught of the art of war. At least through safe and controlled training exercises." Iron Heart admitted, which caused her to give the smuggest smirk in response. She remembered Iron Heart's less than approving stance towards her presence when she was much younger, so to hear him admit such a thing was downright thrilling.  
  
"Though you are young and have much to learn, you have done well to fight a Knight to be of the Tetrarchy to a stand still. Well done, Hatchling." Star Strider admitted. She didn't use her name, which annoyed her, but praise from her was like finding unicorns in deserts, it was always worth marking down as a moment to celebrate. She beamed at her and placed a hand on her hip, clearly pleased with herself at the thought of receiving praise from even some of her harshest critics.  
  
But there was still dissent from the general consensus of her being an awesome person. Most particularly the eternally hard to please Mother Brain who, no matter how often Samus indicated she was generally unwilling to hear out; always insisted with her commentary. And even before she started with her speech Samus could sense the impending dread of having to listen to the bloated brain in a jar through its designated avatar; one of her spherical eye drones who always had a word of judgement for her.  
  
"-Your inability to secure victory does me substantial concern. How are you to bring peace to the universe if you cannot best a beginner level peer opponent? How are we to be able to entrust the safety of the project to someone such as you if you cannot cleanly, and convincingly defeat someone of equivalent technology and physicality?-" She said, clearly far from impressed and deadset on spoiling her good mood as quickly as possible. She tried to brush it off, but try as she may the fact that she still couldn't get Mother Brain to offer her even the vaguest of praise bothered her. What would it take to please this A.I she wondered?  
  
"Oh don't you ever have anything even a little nice to say?" Samus said with a huff of annoyance, blowing some blonde hair away from her eye as she glared at Mother Brain who seemed to narrow the optics of her camera drone to stare back at Samus as harshly as she could manage. Clearly, she was not at all amused by this show of defiance to her will and whim. Of course, one could say that she was generally incapable of any of the emotions relating to amusement, but Samus could feel her naked displeasure from this. Radiating from her like the heat of a star. It was an ugly, hateful sensation.  
  
"-Kind words and coddling will not serve to bring about peace in the stars. I am sure you know as well as any the necessity of action, and your actions still leave vast room for improvement. Do not presume to speak to me as if I am simply out to demean you, you are to be the greatest instrument in the quest for peace. To be soft on you in the honing of your abilities is to open the door for barbarism. And that is a door I cannot and will not allow to be opened, Hatchling.-" She always tried to make herself sound like the reasonable party in every single discussion. It was one of her most infuriating qualities truth be told. That because she didn't invest the same sort of emotional energy into life that everyone else did she was therefore entitled to being seen as more correct and impartial. A vein ticked in Samus' forehead but she let the seething sensation pass. An outburst is just what the A.I wanted her to do.  
  
"How can we create peace if we don't make people want it? We can't just take people's guns away! We need to help them too, solve why they want to fight in the first place, or they'll just beat each other with sticks instead! You can't do that without kindness and understanding! Do you think you can just...rationalise people into peace?" Samus said, angry but not yelling. She knew how Mother Brain worked, an outburst would be taken as a sign of triumph by the cybernetic intelligence.  
  
"-I see no need for unnecessary empathy and sympathy to be given to those who continually work against the establishment of lasting order. Chaos agents are to be neutralised, not understood beyond what is necessary to eliminate them and ensure no further reoccurance is observed. You are correct however, in that attempting to debate those committed to such destructive lines of action is useless. You are misguided in your desire to continually provide for others their solution. First priority must always be to remove the problem actors. Then we guide where the dominoes fall afterwards.-" Mother Brain countered calmly, her psychic presence having barely flinched at Samus' rising choler.  
  
"If you think we can just kill the right people, destroy the right things, and smash the right places to make things better then well...I don't know what to say to you. Besides that you're not half as clever as you think you are you overgrown enclyclopedia. If you don't understand people...what makes you think you can fix anything?" Samus said, snarling at the computer which seemed to be briefly taken aback by her put down. Anger started to flash in her and she narrowed the optic of her drone at Samus.  
  
But she wasn't allowed to speak. Old Bird tapped his cane and coughed. "Mother Brain, you will treat Samus with the respect she is owed. She is to be our torchbearer. It's past time you learned to accept this." He said, and all at once Mother Brain's fury went cold. Yes, she wasn't chosen by the Chozo to succeed them. She was. The twelve year old golden haired girl who was simply adopted into the ways, the traditions, and the culture of the Chojinzuko. Not her, not their guardian of knowledge. Not their lorekeeper. Not their finest mind whose psychic will could stretch across light years. But her, the pet, the hybrid. The Hatchling, not the Mother, was to bear the torch of civilization. A truly and terribly bitter pill for the A.I to swallow as she tried to make sense of it but was unable to.  
  
But just across the room, the mood was far more dire. There young torchbearer was not in a position of strength, but of weakness. Where he for all his physical and mental power; was terribly isolated and alone in the face of someone's bitter and intense scorn. The gathered Alimbics locked the Chozo out of their psychic discussion, keeping their communications private between themselves and their entrusted charge. He would be made to stand alone before those who raised him. But the love a parent should have for their child was in rather short supply, only felt at all by some of them while others made quite sure that he felt something far colder and far less willing to forgive than anything someone entrusted with a child ought to give them.  
  
"-I am pained by your inability to accomplish to do what should be the simplest of tasks. I give you every advantage and yet here you are...wasting what I offer with your continued flabbiness. Really, it's a pity that you are struggling so much to do what is asked of you when you have been given such potential.-" Zurvduat was clearly displeased. His psychic voice was cold and unpleasant. There was not yet any hot fury in it, but Arne gulped all the same in dreadful anticipation. He tried to focus on better visions of things to come within the distant sight, but so far all he was sensing was immediate and imminent danger. The sensation of being under threat was a cloying, choking thing. Almost like having a hand around his heart, squeezing it, constricting it.  
  
"-Are you even remotely aware of how fortunate you are, Primoris? Most in your position would have been left adrift in foster systems or orphanages or simply left to die. Yet here you are, standing amongst those that your kind would consider to be as gods. Wearing our technology, using our sorcery, infused with our blood. You have been made to stand amongst higher life forms. So why do you insist on failing to live up to your potential?-" Zurvduat made it all seem like his fault. It was always his fault. Everything was his fault.  
  
"I managed to get a draw, please...I tried my best." Arne offered weakly, he was not prepared to argue this with him, but he felt like he had to do something to survive. "She's good...really good. I'm sorry I couldn't win, but we're just really...really..." He said, struggling to try and find the right words to say when under this level of stress. What should he say? What could he say? He turned to his distant sight to help, to put words in his mouth that would aid in his struggle to escape this conversation with his relation with Zurvduat intact.  
  
"Closely matched." He said, putting it in terms that the Knight-General would appreciate, at least he hoped. "Our capabilities are almost identical. We can counter anything the other tries." He said, seeming to get a little sympathy, but not from Zurvduat. He instead, ignored what he saw as excuses, not giving Arne any signals to let him know if what he was doing was working.  
  
"-Please, don't do this to our son. He's done all we could ask of him, and it's well past time for him to have his rest. This is supposed to be a meeting of celebration, not strife.-" Elmorni said before Zurvduat raised a hand to silence her and turned his spiteful gaze in her direction. Mystromagus and Knight-General stared into each other for some time, neither backing down from this confrontation while Arne felt the powerful sensations of danger flowing through him. His distant sight screamed in alarm at him and he felt that there was no way out of this situation. Mortirk and Ygrak looked upon him with pity, Deglos and the Palatine with resignment, while Osith and Urim; ever the suck ups, seemed to richly anticipate Zurvduat's baleful attentions directed towards him.  
  
"-The issue is that we have been far too kind to your son for far too long. When will you accept that the Primoris requires discipline rather than endless pampering?-" He said with no small degree of contempt. Arne was not privy to many of the conversations between Zurvduat and Elmorni but what was always clear to him was that there was not an ounce of love lost between them. If anything, based on the empathic vibes between the two, there was something far more worrisome that coiled between the two's every word. Discord, strife, chaos, whatever you want to call it; it was a deeply unpleasant thing to have to feel.  
  
"-He has failed to deliver the results expected of him. He must be made to account for this. Anything less would be a validation of his lack of effort. We must reaffirm his commitment to begetting the victory of the Order. Now is not the time for roses.-" Urim agreed, folding his arms behind his back and turning his attentions towards Arne once he had been given the telepathic signal to allow him to speak. Though one of the Civilian Tetrarchs, Urim's sycophancy towards Zurvduat had not dimmed one iota in the time Arne had known him. Whether Urim hated him or was just far too willing to please Zurvduat for his own good was unknown, and utterly immaterial to the boy as he gulped, clenching his fist slightly in anticipation.  
  
"I did everything I could...please..." Arne whimpered before he sensed the heavy weight of disappointment cloying the air around him. An oppressive cloak of hostility that felt like lead being wrapped around his chest and dragged his spirits down immensely. He felt like he was falling down an abyss, and the gravity of the final reunion with the ground was waiting for him. Breath was hard for him to come by, the lungs of a young god quaked slightly as he struggled for breath. His heart squeezed and his stomach was doing knots beneath his skin. A panic attack was starting to settle in and he wanted to find a place to hide from the endless, vicious and meanspirited barbs being thrown his direction. But his fear and dread seemed to embolden other Alimbics into at least making a stand.  
  
"-Yes, please, listen to him. We cannot keep pushing him like this. He's just a boy, you are going to break him if we do not relent at least the slightest amount.-" Ygrak protested, briefly relieving some of the mounting pressure the boy felt. The elephantine foot of repression began to ease off of him and he felt like the vise was starting to relax. His chest slowly untangled and the twitch in his left hand slowed to a gentle stop as he stabilised his breathing. He had for a moment, banished his fear and was holding firm. He wasn't alone, and that was enough to give him some courage.  
  
"-For a novice such as him, preforming his obligations as well as he had; forcing a draw no less; is proof enough that he deserves to be treated with the respect of a proper knight. Not castigated for failing to triumph over the Chozo's hopes and dreams on his first encounter. In any case, would it not be wiser to build bridges rather than to try and assert dominance in our twilight?-" Mortirk said, wishing to make himself heard over the cacophony of the psychic debate between the various Alimbics. His challenge clearly irritating Zurvduat whose singular eye turned towards him with a scornful glare.  
  
"-Disregard Mortirk's sympathy Primoris. That this was not enough is clear that we must escalate our efforts to mould you into something better. We have spared you the full weight of our methods for long enough. We must intensify efforts to prepare you for your purpose then if you cannot meet our standards of excellence.-" Osith said, her words sounding hollow from their contradictory combination of honeyed promises of betterment and vinegary condemnations of perceived present inadequecy. Her refusal to even once mention his name, instead insisting on that hateful title made him just about squirm beneath his suit.  
  
"-Given the equivalency of his armament and training to that of Samus, was it any surprise that Arne had fought her to a draw? They are far too closely matched in capabilities and skillsets for one to have been likely to have definitively triumphed over the other. That our work has produced an equivalent combatant despite our lack of familiarity with the present era should be worthy of celebration, not condemnation.-" The Palatine Mind's offerings of reason were as always, solace for Arne in the face of the pressures the others enjoyed to heap on him. He was sure that there was more than just pragmatic benevolence but genuine kindness to the machine.  
  
"-Based on the results we have given I feel that escalating immediately would be unwise. His demonstrated skillset has already surpassed that of most Alimbic squires equivalent to him in age. We should consider ourselves fortunate that he has demonstrated such a gift for quick learning, not counting unfilled jelly hexes over what might be.-" Deglos finally said. He was always rather neutral in his opinions towards Arne, and for that Arne was never quite sure how to feel whenever he turned his attentions towards him. His profile in the conduits of the distant sight was always hard to read. But for now, he wasn't making the hairs on the back of Arne's neck stand up on their ends like the others were.  
  
But a psychic pulse from Zurvduat silenced all dissent. The General wished to speak. "-That will be quite enough out of all of you. Now, for the business at hand. You, Primoris. You promised me results and now all you have to show for it is mediocrity. This will not be allowed to continue. There will be changes. Starting now.-" He said, pointing his right hand directly at the boy and starting to float towards him, his ominous leer enough to tell the boy that he was in no small amount of trouble.  
  
Panic began to fill Arne as he realised that the others would not stand against Zurvduat out of deference to their duty. His breathing intensified and he started to back away as his adoptive father approached. He tried not to make it too obvious that he was scared while the other ancients spoke amongst themselves; gathering in their gossip circles. The sight of Zurvduat raising a hand made Arne's voice crack as he resisted the urge to lift a limb to defend himself on reflex. But even in a room full of people he felt cornered. The black tunnel of isolation returned once again and once again he allowed his psychic defenses to falter for his deference to his "father'." Even the sight in the corner of his eyes and the basic psychic sensation of concern from the others could not snap him out of this animal fear.  
  
"-You as ever find new and novel ways to disappoint me, Primoris. You could not triumph over this girl even when she is moulded by hands with the ideals of children. Where is your spirit and thirst for victory, Primoris? Do I not already give enough for you that you must repay my generosity with mediocrity?-" Zurvduat said, his psychic voice ringing in Arne's head like a deep, brassy bell as his voice became so low as to sound like a demon's contemptuous snarling. He flinched in fear, but the General was not the only psychic here, and he saw a light in the tunnel of blackness Zurvduat had conjured around him as he approached. In his mind's eye he backed away, his lips quivering in fright until he felt a hand on his shoulder and the illusion of isolation was broken; unable to persist in the face of so many other psions and mystics.  
  
Samus looked at the boy with concern as she waved a hand in front of his face and then glared at Zurvduat once the spaced out look in Arne's crimson eyes disappeared. He gasped for breath while she dared to approach the General before any of her family could say anything. Fire was in her eyes as she stood him down. She straightened herself and stood as tall as her twelve year old body could; even within the zero suit she refused to give him the satisfaction of so much as the merest flinch. Sixty thousand years old he may have been, the conqueror of ten thousand systems he may be, the barely questioned supreme leader of the remaining Alimbics he indeed was; but all Samus saw was a bully attacking someone weaker than him and someone she liked on top of that. Here was her chance to prove she was someone people could look up to as a symbol.  
  
She rose to the challenge and made her stand. If he wanted to keep going, he'd have to move through her. "Back off." She folded her arms and stood her ground, prompting the Grey General to stop as he floated through the air. His gaze turned away from his charge and down towards this little blonde girl who had decided to interpose herself between him and his charge. The sheer audacity of it even seemed to blinker the commander, while she even took a step forward as if to dare him to do anything about it. And when he did not, she only hardened her stare a little more.  
  
The idea that this twelve year old child of all things would give him pause just about brought his whole thought process to a halt. "-Who are you to defy me, little girl?-" Zurvduat sounded incredulous. As if the very idea of being challenged by her was a shock to his entire world view. She who had known his charge for a day was now standing here telling him that he had to lay off his own charge? What manner of madness was he faced with now? Who was this human? To presume to stand before him as an equal? When even the Chozo knew to afford him the respect his station deserved?  
  
And for a moment, that stare made him feel the slightest bit of wavering uncertainty. Could he even make her move?  
  
"Samus Aran, Universal Warrior." The cold stare she gave could cut bendezium like cloth and Zurvduat did not care for it. This mammal who could not even come up to his waist was challenging his authority so brazenly it was even making Arne calm down and look at him in a new light. Doubt in his supremacy surely crept into the boy's mind. Doubt in the necessity of following his orders. Doubt in whether his acceptance was something he needed to live for. It was a small seed of doubt, but it was planted all the same.  
  
"You're never going to get what you want if you keep on treating Arne like that. And I'm not going to let you keep hurting him." She said, and Zurvduat felt immediately that he could not push her around the way he did his charge. Not in a million years.  
  
No, he could not let this stand. He'd need answers out of the ones entrusted with her. Perhaps they could give him something, anything to make sense of this brazen defiance. "-...What sort of child are you raising to so brazenly insult me with this audacity?-" Zurvduat said, turning his gaze towards the Chozo who seemed to be quite amused by her display of bravado with a handful of exceptions that sympathised with his worldview. Indeed, the whole mood of the room seemed to be against him save for his loyalists. He admonished himself for forgetting that he was the leader of a much diminished people and backed down slightly, only to find Samus filling that void with her presence.  
  
The first of the Chozo to intercede in the conversation was of course the one that Zurvduat was starting to dislike more with every word out of his beak. "One with the right sort of heart that will be necessary to forge lasting peace." Old Bird said confidently.  
  
Zurvduat resisted the urge to laugh, but her noble fury at his decision to try and ignore her drew all of his attention. She was like a storm of potentiality, one that he deigned to look into the future of for the briefest moment. And what he saw was enough to almost blind him; the same sort of fiery nexus of connected fates and affected destinies that hung around people like himself or his Primoris. It made him shift his stance. No, she was not to be dismissed. She was to be monitored, closely, carefully.  
  
"-Yes...I can see why you would believe such a thing.-" He said, letting his scorn for this defiant, stubborn, and dare he say even heroic little girl fade from his psychic voice. Even most of his soldiers would never dream of standing against him in such a way. In a way, he almost respected such fire. But Samus? Samus gave him no respect because he had earned none. What had he done to earn even the smallest iota of her respect? Especially when Arne, inspired by this example; stepped up and stood by her side and looked up at his father with an expression of rediscovered courage.  
  
"-Such a display was to be expected of you Hatchling. But I am surprised that you would join her in this foolishness. Why stand with her against the most sensible other mind in the room?-" Mother Brain, ever the voice of disdainful and frigid callousness, weighed in with her crushing psychic presence. For Samus, she gave disappointment. For Arne, she gave a calculated sort of disregard. What did he matter? Another foot soldier in the war for order? Clearly the Hatcling cared for the Neophyte as did he care for she. But what could she expect but more of the usual emotional weakness by her and those she bonded with? Mother Brain did however, make mental note to think of ways to make use of the knowledge of the developing bond.  
  
But Mother Brain meant nothing to Arne however, something she was well aware of. She had indeed anticipated that the child's wavering deference would not apply to her and so she was not in the least bit surprised when he spoke up.  
  
"Because she's standing with me." He said, he thought of cleverer, more rational arguments but dismissed them. What really mattered to him, was that she was fighting for him. A relative stranger was standing by his side and taking up his cause. And he was starting to realise...maybe he could do something like that too? Make others see him the way he saw her? Well...perhaps not the exact way he saw her. He thought as their hands brushed into one another and squeezed their soon entwined fingers tight in solidarity. Them against the world.  
  
Zurvduat took a moment to turn towards Mother Brain's drone and gave her a moment of regard, one that was swiftly reciprocated. Yes, there was at least one thing to gain from this situation as he sensed the mood of the room rapidly turning against him. Perhaps it was time for him to focus on other projects then. Let Elmorni content herself with raising him. He had time to make new investments. He would however, remember this, oh would he ever remember this. Him, Samus, even Spire and Svihaly who had decided to disgrace him with hard stares even though this wasn't their business. Still, he had lived a long life, he could wait.  
  
"-So be it.-" He said, backing away just as Samus had demanded.  
  


_Chambers of Rest, Arganti_

  
Arne sat in the bed which had reconfigured itself to his proportions and desires the moment he approached it about an hour ago. Very fancy really. He was trying to lose himself in the data he could read off of a holographic text, neurosensors in the tactile light scrolling through the radiant pages with his thoughts. He could have had it uploaded into his brain, but the sensation of holding it in his hands with the light wrapped into a comfortable holding position was something rather relaxing as he pondered the meaning of the texts. The cozy room was warmly lit and coloured, a somewhat rounded box of a place for him to rest in for the duration of his stay on Arganti. It was his fortress, and he had the walls show images of things that brought peace to him.  
  
But his reverie was interrupted by the sound of the doors dilating open for someone else. His attentions flicked over to where his senses were telling him someone had just come through. And a smile soon dawned on his face as soon as he confirmed who it was. That golden haired valkyrie who stood up for him when so many others wouldn't.  
  
"Hey Samus." He said, scooching up in his bed a bit and putting the holographic texts away. "Come on in and uh...thanks for standing up for me. I really appreciate it." He gave a gentle smile as she beamed at him.  
  
"It's no problem at all. You were hurting, so I helped. It's what people should do for each other." She said as she approached him, looking at the spot next to him and then turning her attention back to him. "Mind if I sit next to you?" She said, getting a nod of consent from him and easing herself onto the bed. He liked his beds at about a medium level of resistance it seemed. One thing she shared with him at least. "Are you holding up alright? You seemed terrified of Zurvduat." She said, her expression soft and friendly to let him know that he was safe with her.  
  
"Yeah...when he's mad with me sometimes he makes me feel like I'm all alone while he talks to me. Like I'm in a dark room with nothing but the two of us." He said, casting his attentions towards the floor. He exhaled gently and relaxed the tensions that built up inside of him, he felt like he could talk about anything with her...so he would. He'd open up his heart to her and he knew she'd hang onto his every word just as he would her. And he had questions for her that he wanted to air as soon as he could.  
  
"He shouldn't do that to you, or anyone. Nobody should do something like that, not to scare people. Especially not when you've done nothing wrong. Why does he do that to you?" She said. Her word choice was deliberate. She wouldn't say he let him do that to him, no she wasn't going to blame a victim. Not now, not ever. She would never forgive herself if she ever started faulting victims for the actions of their attackers. She laid a hand on his shoulder, wanting him to speak freely. She made sure the grip was firm, but not constricting.  
  
"I don't know...he says it's because I need to focus on nothing but what he tells me when he uses solopathy. But he only does it when he's mad with me. Usually when I don't live up to his expectations. He wants me to be the perfect prototype knight. And I'm trying, but I'm not sure if I'm good enough to meet his standards." He said, twiddling the fingers on his right hand somewhat on the edge of the bed, letting them rub against each other and looking at the motions of his fingers as if to distract him from the present conversation.  
  
"Arne, you can go toe to toe with me and as far as I'm concerned that means you are good enough. Besides, you're more than just...how good you are at punching and shooting things! You're a person, you've got dreams like I do. I wanna go out, see every sight, and save and help everyone I can. I want everyone to be able to live free, without want or worry or fear. I just...want to get out there and be the travelling hero everyone needs. So they can look up, see me, and feel inspired. Then I'm gonna write and paint all about it. But what about you? What do you want to do?" She asked, looking up wistfully as if the night sky was above them as the ceiling seemed to transform into that of a planetarium as soon as it detected her desire to make a theatrical point.  
  
"I want to be a hero too. I want to keep people safe, happy, and able to be who they want to be. I want to see people sleep at night safe because of stuff I did. Like my birth parents often did. I want to help and protect. Until nobody needs to be protected anymore and I can...I guess check everything else off the list. Finding old ruins, building machines, and funny you mention writing...heh, I guess we do have a lot in common no? Maybe we could even be heroes together? It'd be nice to do that kind of stuff with a friend." He said, grinning a bit as he looked up at the simulated night sky above their heads.  
  
"I think I'd like that." She said with a grin of her own as she thought about it. Having someone to go on adventures with would be absolutely delightful. As much as her imagined career path would involve and indeed necessitate going alone into forbidden, unexplored, or dangerous places, the idea of spending her whole life without company was far from appealing to her. Solitude was not at all what she had in mind for the entirety of her life. She just needed someone she could entrust to be at her side and not have to worry about the safety of.  
  
However, he wasn't just going to vent to her, she needed some attention too. "But you and Mother Brain. Why doesn't she like you? What did she do to upset you? Besides being well...a cold rationalist who doesn't get feelings?" He also, was not the sort of person to start pointing fingers at those who had suffered over those who had caused suffering.  
  
She was slightly caught off guard, not expecting him to offer his own support to her, but appreciating it all the same as he turned his head to look her in the eyes and turned his lips upwards into a reassuring smile. If she spoke, he would listen.  
  
"Honestly, I think she's just angry that she's not the only one who's going to inherit the Chozo's legacy. Plus, she likes to be in control of everything and I don't think it's very healthy to seek to be that. Especially on your own. Society's about togetherness and cooperation, not overlords and competition. Competing should be for fun, not to survive or be comfortable. Like...it's nice on Zebes because people help each other be who they want to be. Nobody's alone, but Mother Brain wants to do everything herself." She said with a smile on her face. Thankful for the chance to get to let some things off her chest to someone she felt that she could safely confide in. Someone whom Mother Brain wasn't monitoring.  
  
"You know, I've started to read more of the stuff my parents wrote. I think you'd like what they had to say about what society should be like, it's a lot like what you say." He said, pulling out the holotext co-authored by his parents titled "The needs of Transformative Society". He had found solace in finding a connection with his birth parents; posthumous though it may be; through their writings. It made him feel like he understood them a bit more, though it also made the anguish of not having them here with him all the deeper. His eyes lit up as Samus took the texts in hand and started flicking through them with keen eyed interest, her genius mind devouring the information at incredible speed. Her fascination with his parents' writings could give the two so much to talk about in the future.  
  
Before she'd properly begin her reading, Samus looked at the names of the authors of the text and her heart sank as she realised that her own birth parents never really had anything to leave behind for her to go through the way his did. They had journals and logs written down yes, service records and writings of them that the Chozo had scrounged up. But obviously engineering treastises weren't quite the same as political musings. With how early her parents died in her life, their presence within it was minimal. They were more ideals to be aspired to than people with a real presence in her life, scarcely even memories at this point. It made her feel a certain melancholy, like there was a hole in her life.  
  
He sensed something amiss and decided to intercede. "Is something wrong? Did I say something I shouldn't have?" He said, concern apparent before realization dawned shortly after. "Your parents didn't leave that much behind did they?" He said, working on the distant sight's guidance and the two's undeveloped psychic gift to guide him to what to say. Maybe in the future he'd learn how to talk to people without these crutches, but they were an invaluable tool in the meantime. And from her, he sensed that he was on the right track.  
  
A sad smile flashed across her face as she fidgeted slightly with her fingers. "No. I don't really know them all that well. They died before I could have any solid memories of them. It's hard, because I like to think they were wonderful people but...it's almost like I never really met them?" She said with a long, tired sounding exhalation. "So I asked my family to find anything they could about them, so it'll be more like they're still here. But sometimes I feel like all that does is make me wish I had them so I could actually see them." Her blue eyes then fixated on him and her head tilted slowly to the side. "I can feel a lot of the same coming from you. Wanting to know where you came from, but never really being able to know yeah?" She said, her smile becoming more empathetic.  
  
He nodded in understanding as he snaked a hand somewhat closer to her, a gesture which she reciprocated. "I...yes. I was three when they died. I watched them split off from Spire's gunship when we were trying to leave Cylosis to fight a monster so we could get away. But other than that it's all just...fragments." He said, his voice wavering somewhat but ultimately he was determined to push through it. "Elmorni, Ygrak, Mortirk...they insisted I know my birth parents, so I got all the records on them that they could pull. I've just...been constantly reading everything they wrote, I guess so I could feel like they raised me." He said, letting their fingers touch now. "But I also want to live now...in the present. Maybe if I do right in this life; they'll be proud when they look at me from the next. Like I'm sure yours are." He said, catching her by slight surprise as the two's cheeks started to turn red and their fingers interlocked.  
  
The two stared into each other for a few moments, and a kiss was shared. Short, warm, but gentle and soft and a signal to speak of the small nothings of the universe for hours on end. What was said and done from there on that night was of little import to anyone but the two of them, but to them it was the sort of night that defined a decade.

* * *

**Consolidated Logbook Entries**  
  
Individuals: Artificial Intelligences: Active: Biomechanical: Chojinzuko: Mother Brain (part 1)  
  
The most sophisticated cerebrocomputer of her sort in the known universe, Mother Brain is the central command system for all that the Zebesian Chozo have wrought. Capable of instant real time communication and command over countless platforms over the hundred and fifty billion light-year radius of known space Mother Brain's influence reaches far. Through her psionics she controls the life forms of all of Zebes and other outposts of the Zebesian faction of Chozo to ensure they conform exactly to their designs. She regulates the weather of these many planets carefully seeded and engineered by the likes of Re-Sekh over the course of tens of thousands of years, and monitors all the machinery built on them as if they were a vast body. The full extent to which her control reaches across the universe is unknown, but the facility in Tourian is less than a tiny fraction of her capacity and capabilities. Her knowledge of Chozo lore; while not fully complete due to the fracturing of late era Chozo society; is immeasurable in value. Her computational power is largely regarded as fruitless to measure, and her cognitive abilities are similarly impressive. However, the very way she interacts with the rest of existence has shaped her worldview in a perhaps negative way. She primarily views other beings as things to either control or destroy if they are unable to be guided along her pathways.  
  
 _Arne's Notes:_  
  
She's one of the creepiest, most unsettling and unpleasant things I've ever met. I legitimately have no desire to engage her in any sort of conversation if I can help it and honestly really wish she could just go away. I really hope Samus is safe with her, I have a terrible feeling about her.  
  
 _Samus' Notes:_  
  
I don't think I've ever really gotten along with her at any point in my life. Every time we speak it's because she's not happy with me for some reason and to be entirely honest, she's gotten nastier as time goes on. Honestly though, I'm tired of trying to make peace with her if she never even lets me try.  
  
Individuals: Organic: Active: Military: Officers: Alimbic: Knight-General: Zurvduat (part 1)  
  
The highest ranking currently active Alimbic, Zurvduat is the Knight-General in command of the forces aboard the Tetrarch Order Far Roaming Battlecruiser " _Caesarian Lance_ ". Zurvduat had a highly successful career that stretched throughout the Order and the Milieu's long and bitter cold war and is often known as "the Hundred Thousand General" for decisively participating in the subjugation of over a hundred thousand inhabited planets into the Order over the course of fifty thousand years of military service. Remaining at his rank due to refusing promotion to higher status out of a belief that his talents were best reserved for lower level command, Zurvduat would go onto make many treastises on the art of war and the prosecution of the art of conquest, with much of his work becoming required reading for Order military hopefuls. Regarded as a firm but fair taskmaster and a believer in the necessity of constantly expanding the Order, Zurvduat is to some a guiding force of civilization and to others a dogged and relentless imperialist.  
  
 _Arne's Notes:_  
  
I try so hard to please him every day. But any time he shows appreciation it's always temporary. I make some other mistake later and it's back to the beginning with him. I feel trapped and I'm not sure if I can just keep doing this forever. Why can't he love me back after everything I've tried to do for him?  
  
 _Samus' Notes:_  
  
If he doesn't learn to appreciate what he has I'm going to make it my mission to make sure he learns to do so the hard way. His own son is terrified of him and that's just not something I can accept. I'm just hoping there's some way to replace him as leader of the remaining Alimbics.  
  
Individuals: Organic: Active: Civilian: Scientists: Chozo: Re-Sekh (part 1)  
  
Also known as Old Bird, Re-Sekh is one of the oldest remaining Chozo to have yet to depart from the material universe at more than a hundred and sixty thousand Earth years of age. Known to be a kindly and gentle soul and a veteran of the Sophont Commonwealth's conflict with its greatest ever foe, Re-Sekh has elected to stay behind as most of the Chozo retire from the cosmos for one reason or another so that he may help guide younger societies towards better paths. Re-Sekh is well regarded as a scientist, philosopher, and mystic with accolades stretching across milennia of time and having catalogued and interacted with countless thousands of worlds and cultures. The universe was bright and full of wonders to him, and he was recorded as deeply enjoying contact and interaction with all things new and foreign. He had many children over the years, and had adopted and raised a great many orphans he had come across in his thousands of years of life. Even at his current age however, he has decided to adopt one last child; Samus Aran, in the hopes of making amends for not being there to protect K-2L from the Confederacy's unprovoked attack on the mining colony.  
  
 _Arne's Notes:_  
  
He's really nice and I hope I can get to know him more soon. He's always got some wisdom to say and he's just...I feel almost as if he's kind of everyone's grandpa really? I'd really like to meet with him more when I've got the time. I almost wish he was my dad sometimes.  
  
 _Samus' Notes:_  
  
Papa's the best! He takes me to all the most interesting places and has shown me all the best things! But he's always so supportive whenever I need something too. I hope I can always come back to him even when I'm ready to leave home. It'd be so much lonelier in the universe without papa.  
  
Individuals: Organic: Active: Civilian: Scientists: Alimbic: Elmorni (part 1)  
  
The oldest Alimbic aboard the _Caesarian Lance_ , Elmorni has been alive for some one hundred and sixty thousand years and has had a distinguished record of scientific and mystic achievement throughout that period. A nurturing figure often controversial for her disagreements with the Tetrarch Order's approach to lower civilizations and activism to try and change their policies, she primarily studied the mystic practices of other societies as well as their biologies in an effort to better understand information that the mostly rationally minded Order may have overlooked. This lead to often years of in depth, long term study of many societies that is credited with giving her a more humble perspective regarding the Alimbic's role with other societies as well as lesser regard for the policies of Imperial peace. Her posting to the _Caesarian Lance_ was not without its share of controversy, particularly to Zurvduat who resented having to collaborate with a Civilian Tetrarch so opposed to his typical tactics of conquest and pacification. However in the post-Order universe, Elmorni has more clout than she once did, and considers herself the primary caregiver for Arne Skjǫldr in the wake of the death of Cylosis.  
  
 _Arne's Notes:_  
  
Mom's always been there to dry my tears and talk to me about whatever I need to. And it's because of her that I know as much about where I came from and who I am as I do. She means everything to me, and I can't thank her enough for everything she's done. I should get her something nice soon, Mother's day is coming up.  
  
 _Samus' Notes:_  
  
She's probably my favourite of the Alimbics I've met so far in all honesty. It's a shame I haven't seen more of her yet, but I think I could really get to like her. Maybe she could even come to Zebes one day and we could talk about all the things we've seen? She must have seen so much excitement in all the time she's been alive.


	13. Forlorn: Venture (AS & SA)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Samus and Arne are sent to the planet Zoran to test their learned skills to see if they're ready to take the next step in their training.

_Thirty Third Personal Star Nexus, Teleportarium, Arganti, 5th of August 10,013_

  
  
Arne's laughter was something he hadn't gotten much use out of throughout his life. He hadn't heard that many jokes, nevermind practised them. But the story being shared with him was enough to light up his day. It almost distracted him from the room he was now inside. A great network of gateways through spacetime that connected to many places. This facility had once been of great importance to the Sophont Commonwealth in the ancient past. Differing architectural styles such as the stony, chiselled and impressionistic works of the Chozo; the curving, organic, functional and insectile designs of the Alimbics; the angular, metallic, brutalist and geometric constructs of the N'kren; the illuminated coils and gentle flowing stylisation of the Ylla; the rocky and crystalline, almost natural looking Earthworks of the Diamonts; the riotous colours and bubbly schematas of the Faeran and more that Arne was less familiar with; were all gathered together in harmony, each distinct but all fitting together.  
  
Samus though, who gave an aside glance when not busy sharing her humour with Arne instead took a moment to absorb how it all came into one holistic work of art. A symbol of unity between countless cultures that had thrived for tens of millions of years in harmony. From the beauty and contributions of each came together a picture of a glorious whole. It was a testament to the achievements that those without the drive to dominate one another could accomplish. Finally, it was also a celebration of the unique traits of each contributor rather than subsumption into a single grey mass. And Samus was filled with aching longing to have only had a chance to see it when it was bustling with activity from across the known universe. What a sight that must have been she thought in the nanosecond she gave the musing before turning back to her partner.  
  
"So I'm just wondering; why do adult skrees explode? Just how did that evolve? Just think of all the dead ends that blew up on accident! It gets spooked and boom!" She said, spreading her hands out to make the gesture indicating an explosion, her wide blue eyes looking slightly upwards while she made the sound with her mouth. But she wasn't done.  
  
"It gets poked too hard, kaboom!" She said, getting a laugh out of him as she went a bit harder with the beatboxed explosion sound.  
  
"At least only the adults explode...Gods of my ancestors, imagine how few there would be left if the babies could go off too. She would lay the eggs and then when she helps them hatch, she gets a faceful of bombs instead of kisses. Every nest would be a cluster bomb!" He said, pondering it briefly before shaking his head and snorting while Samus sniggered a bit.  
  
"The Skrees survive because few dare approach them. For every few that die to sacrifice themselves, hundreds more will never be bothered by prey." Grey Voice said as humourlessly as ever, looming over the two and tilting his head.  
  
"Oh come now, there's been more than a few accidents. I remember when you saw your first one; I don't think I've ever seen you go shieldless to Brinstar after the coat of paint you go from that." Old Bird said wryly, the two humans looking to one another and covering their mouths to hide their laughter while Grey Voice clenched his beak a little tighter beneath his helmet to avoid giving away his sense of annoyance. Doing so would just encourage them to make more attempts at comedy.  
  
"Hardly the first time he's had a coating of goo on his beak either. Just usually not that colour." August Wings said with a deadpan voice while Samus outright cackled and Arne doubled over. Grey Voice spared a moment to pinch his brows and whistled through the nostril holes in his beak, a prolonged tweet of resignation emerging from the ancient avian. Why he let his distant sight down to be surprised by that joke would be a question he'd ask himself for the rest of his life.  
  
"-It's always inspiring to see how little lowbrow humour changes over the milennia.-" Elmorni said wryly, clearly amused but not allowing herself more than a few scarce chuckles.  
  
"-Personally I'm just sad I never got a chance to see that in person.-" Ygrak said, wistfully and with a bit of dramatic flair added to emphasise the ache of missing out on what must have been an incredible sight.  
  
"-As much mirth as this begets, I would like to suggest steering our course back towards the reason why we've brought our charges here.-" Mortirk said, looking down towards Arne and Samus and then back to the others gathered.  
  
"-So it would appear that you are not entirely without your sense of duty, Mortirk.-" Zurvduat said coldly.  
  
"-It is to my knowledge that the two of you are approaching a special day. Your thirteenth birthdays, by your reckoning of time. An important transitory phase between infancy and maturity. Thus you two are to be made ready to integrate into your birth societies. But there is one more test before such can occur.-" Zurvduat said, seemingly relishing in the annoyance felt by the Chozo that he had decided to take the opportunity to speak without giving anyone else any time to get a word in.  
  
"-You two will be accompanied by Spire and Armaud; or Svihaly as you often call her. Under their supervision, you will delve into a place to challenge your skills and abilities. If you are able to uncover the true objective of the place we are sending you to, vanquish its challenges, and claim the prize; then you have demonstrated the full basic mastery of combat and exploration and are ready to begin the next phase.-" He explained, conjuring images of the place they were to explore with a minor expression of psychic power. Photons were excited into forming images, air was vibrated into sound, and all at once the visage unfolded.  
  
They were treated to the sight of a facility, a map and a virtual tour at the same time. They could see how it seemed to coil in a sort of maze-like form, how it was vertically layered and pockmarked with all types of teleportation points and regions that would have to be accessed by delving into extraversal realms. The overall impression of it though was that it was arrayed like a spirograph, albeit one that began to form links towards a central point as they got closer and closer to the core of the curving hallways and rooms. Samus guessed that the facility would in total be large enough to take a full day to properly explore. Arne for his part estimated that should the map be accurate, they'd be best off memorising the optimal points for ship landing to ensure that their craft were always close at hand.  
  
But they knew better than to expect that this facility would have been completely mapped out to the last detail by Zurvduat. Samus instinctively figured that the map had flaws to force them to think around them, Arne deduced that part of the challenge would be in overcoming incomplete intelligence; and these points when synthesised came into a new thesis. The great challenge would be to prove that they were worthy explorers and adventurers like the sort of far rangers that once wore armour like theirs. But they were confident that they were up to such a challenge, they had prepared for it for years.  
  
"Trust in Svihaly and Spire, they are your chaperones. But do not expect them to complete the trials for you. They are there for your safety, young ones; and you may entrust them with your lives. But this trial is for you to complete." Grey Voice said.  
  
"-Presuming, of course, you complete this trial, you will be granted the appropriate honours and be ready to reintegrate with your people to hone your social graces before we, at last, begin your psychic and mystic enlightenment. Of course, if you do not succeed, we will have to try again until satisfactory results are achieved. Is that not right, Primoris?-" Zurvduat added, turning his baleful gaze towards Arne in particular, a nod coming from him in response.  
  
"-If desuited and unable to recover within three hours, you will be considered to have failed the challenge. Your armour is your life, it is your greatest weapon, and inside of it, you are your greatest selves. Suit and warrior are one and the same. Without the warrior, the armour is lifeless. Without the armour, the warrior is hobbled. There is to be no time for armourless leisure, either. Am I understood?-" Mother Brain cut in, her Spherical drones observing every angle of the action.  
  
Samus frowned almost immediately. Who was Mother Brain to say what a warrior was at the end of the day? She hadn't fought on her own since she was created. She had her turrets and her endless armies of drones and long-distance psionics, yes, but she quite literally could not move from the spot she was built in.

"What equipment will we be able to find once we're there?" Arne asked. The question refused to leave his mind, and he would be damned if he wasn't going to have it be heard by Mother Brain. And at once he felt the A.I's probings and analysis. He kept his mental guard up and rebuffed her intrusions, her authority was not something he was obliged to follow. And so he rejected it. A cold sensation crawled across his skin, letting him know that Mother Brain was less than pleased by this, but he held firm.  
  
"-Informing you of that would give you an unnecessary informational advantage. You two have shown sufficiently advanced cognitive functions that I do not believe it is necessary to give you more hints than what you will already be provided by your equipment. You are intelligent, use that to your advantage and work with the evidence you can gather. All that will be necessary to complete the task will be discoverable at the site. It is up to you to decipher what is extraneous and what is necessary.-" Mother Brain responded, coldly as ever.  
  
"And I'm guessing that Spire and Armaud can't give us hints either?" Samus asked.  
  
"-Obviously not. Why you felt the need to inquire at all escapes me.-" Zurvduat said, folding his arms.  
  
"-Of course, if you are ever in life-threatening danger, we shall withdraw you from possible harm. This will be counted as a failure of course, but you need not fear for your lives.-" Mortirk said with a small nod.  
  
"You will take your basic loadouts with you to start with. Enough to cover all initial challenges, but further equipment will need to be located to ensure that you are ready for the challenges further within. We will give you a fair chance of success, but not an easily attained one. Such is the best way to prepare you for your duties to come." August Wings said, giving a small bow of acknowledgement to the two children.  
  
"-Try your best to not rely on Spire and Armaud too often, this test is about your skills; not theirs. But I know you can accomplish this, you have given us every reason to believe in your success.-" Elmorni said, folding her hands over her chest and dipping her floating, teardrop shaped neckless head at Arne before repeating the gesture towards Samus, albeit more formally.  
  
Samus smiled and gave Elmorni a thumbs up in response to the gesture while Arne gave a thankful nod and straightened out his stance, approaching Elmorni to receive a head pat from her while Zurvduat looked on with concealed scorn at the display of affection before she let the hand rest on his neck. Her hand was warm to the touch on his skin, and he gave her a soft smile as she looked into his eyes until it was time for her to give him his space. He looked at Zurvduat's faction and flinched away at the baleful gazes he received in return, gulping slightly.  
  
"And while you're still with us, whatever Mother Brain says; there is yet more to the power invested in the both of you than just your bodies, intellects, and arsenals. You will see what I mean soon." Old Bird added at last, laying a hand on Samus' shoulder and resting his beak atop her head briefly, sharing a hug with her. She embraced him warmly, their armours warm against each other and tactile systems approximating all the gentleness that a hug should have as if they weren't armour-clad or shielded at all.  
  
Once he had broken from the gesture, he nodded and gave a slight bow to Arne, who smiled nervously at the Chozo. He didn't mind the show of kindness at all, but he was confused as to why he was giving him such a gesture of affection and respect when he wasn't his child. Still, it wasn't prudent for him to reject it, and he did his best to show his appreciation for it.  
  
"-The gate is ready for you. Once you are on the other side, locate Spire and Armaud Svihaly. From there, I'm sure the two of you can figure it out.-" Agrama said, the black armoured Alimbic letting the warmth of her psychic emanations encourage them while the technosorcery of the gates began to spool up. Runes started to glow, and a powerful combination of the powers of science, psionics, and mysticism came together to not only open a gate across the universe but make the transition from one point to another virtually seamless.  
  
A spherical window to the other side all the way in the Styrmok Galaxy; once called Messier 89; gave the two youths a look at their destination. They were greeted to an expansive vista with a shielded hangar bay door. With a great deal of open space to all sides of the Hangar, there wasn't too much to look at save for the rather unique architecture that mixed its metallic hues with glowing lights from a combination of glyphs, runes, technological systems, and the occasional bioluminescent plant added for a bit of variety wherever it was safe to do so and unlikely to clutter, so primarily near the entrance. Telling how big something really was was a bit difficult when the ancients were fond of manipulating space to fit things that shouldn't fit into spaces that ought to not be able to hold them, but they figured it was at least a three-kilometre wide hangar by five hundred meters tall and one and a half deep. Something they could easily traverse once they had seen everything they needed.  
  
Already their ships, the _Sleipnir_ and the _Dormach_ ; were waiting for them. The Sleipnir was largely blue, with its forward-swept wings and angled tailfins locked into a more compact position, the canards attached to its conical nose similarly folded away, giving the whole craft a considerably more tubular appearance than when in flight while its thrusters remained cool and unfired. And next to it was the Dormach, with a smooth, shallow wedge-shaped body with rear-facing horseshoe-like "wings" that fitted extra engines onto them for increased speed. Almost entirely red save for a few green highlights and its cockpit window, the _Dormach_ 's gave an impression that it could get you just about anywhere in the universe you wanted to go.  
  
Meanwhile, Spire's _Cragimoch_ and Armaud's _Hreldim_ also lay quite near indeed. The rocky, heavyset craft's landing struts extended like pillars, brownish and greyish rock with vein-like lava coloured patterns interspersed with glowing orange crystals while the Diamont craft's wings were folded up and then bent back for storage. And next to it the Hreldim; which looked like nothing less than a flying crescent with a triangular rear section, an insectoid cockpit section with little cameras and sensors arranged a little like a set of compound eyes. Offering armament was the prominent guns protruding out just below the cockpit and from the extremities of the crescent wings and were all shaded an imposing purple; had insectoid legs emerging from it to grasp at the ground below.  
  
Everything was already ready for them, they need only start the adventure by taking the first steps.  
  
"Your ships are fully ready and available for use, should you find a reason to make use of them." Grey Voice advised as Samus and Arne let their armour's layers engulf their faces. The zero suit hoods, the Techno-organic film, the black soft armour, and finally the plating. Blue-Cyan and Orange-Yellow light engulfed their faces as the now mundane process of actualising pieces of their armoursuits into reality happened once again. An incredible sequence far beyond mere teleportation or energy to matter conversion, but literally invoking a part of their being into reality and mingling it with their energies to create something that was as much a work of psychic imaging and sorcerous conjuration as it was a technological manifestation. There was no sense of something lost returning nor a dulling of their senses or anything of the sort. It wasn't even as intrusive as putting on clothing. It was more like their bodies and minds seamlessly assuming another state. And it always gave them a feeling of safety.  
  
All their HUD data read as good to go, giving visual backup to the usual psychofeedback that the armours could give even when fully deactivated. Everything was, just as it was a few moments ago; ready for the journey ahead. Samus gave an enthused nod while Arne stood more patiently and waited for the green light to be given to get a move on. Samus was eager, her energy needed release, and her curiosity needed satiation. Arne was interested, he wanted to know and learn, but he was worried about how little he knew of what they were going to go through. Especially as both were such novices with their prescient distant sight and as such, were not able to get more than bare ideas of what was coming. But they could both sense the words they were waiting for were just moments away.  
  
"Good hunting, younglings." War Hawk said, giving the final bow as the two sprinted off to see what was on the other side. The games had indeed begun.

_Sysathi Hangar, Uratu, Ishant Continent, Planet Zoran, Theg System, Telemor Cluster, Styrmok Galaxy (Messier 89), 5th of August 10,013_

  
  
  
There was a certain eeriness to being in what was supposed to be a bustling hangar with nothing but the hustle of drones undergoing their last orders given ten thousand years ago. A place that should have been full that was instead devoid of people. Leaving it cold and unfriendly, with their senses on high alert for any possible disruption to the promise of an empty room. Yet there was ever the sense of dread behind a hangar with space for thousands of craft having but four amidst enough empty space to let an army camp out here with all of its vehicles and field barracks, even for those who could deadlift a warship if they had the right leverage.  
  
But it was alleviated by the familiar presence of the caretaker machines. They regarded the two human hybrids for the briefest moment, scanning them to confirm that they were supposed to be here and then carrying on their business. They had a job to do, and the passage of years wouldn't dissuade them from it simply because they had not been given new directives in all that time. Ten thousand years wasn't that long by the reckoning of the ancients, perhaps one day they would have directives again.  
  
To Samus however, it was kind of sad. The machines had the minds to do anything they wanted, to build of their own accord or work to their own agenda. Yet they were so committed to their orders that they had restricted themselves to this narrow prescription for their duty in existence. Here they had been, repeating the same routine endlessly since the time of the Romans. What was the purpose of leading such a life? What fulfilment could there possibly be in such a life? She couldn't understand it, and she felt that this would be something that would bother her for years to come.  
  
If only she could set them, free somehow...she thought before she assessed all the possible entrances and exits into the room. She took note of each one, including the teleport pads that helped make this place more navigable. She forwarded her findings to Arne who seemed briefly lost in thought, getting the boy to snap out of his musing about what it might be like to be those machines trapped in an endless loop. He studied the data briefly, and she could feel his mind turning its gears as he gave the problem set before him a bit of thought.  
  
"-Seems like the teleporters are mostly keyed to linked devices in the terminal rooms around the hangar. We'd need higher-level access to use the pads to jump around the facility though. Based on my analysis, though, access to that clearance is probably going to be split amongst several terminals. Just based on the way the data is flowing into them.-" Arne said, lapsing quickly into his analytical mindset as he studied the scans and then compared them to what his armour and his mind could decipher. Based on the data he was given, he could even calculate where the terminals would most likely be. He used that information to sketch out a guessed at map of the facility, but he'd need more information to solidify the fuzzier edges of his constructed roadmap.  
  
"-Well, we're not going to fill in the blanks on the map standing here are we? There should be a map station nearby to make sense of the data. I'm thinking it'd be close to the entrances, but we probably can't download without getting closer. Want to come with, or do you think we'll get the answers by thinking hard enough about it?" Samus said after she gave it a bit of thought. She had a point, for someone who preferred to fight from close up Arne was rather hesitant to rush in. Patience was a virtue, but so was knowing when to seize the initiative. And she already prompted a response from him by starting to walk before he could formulate his reply. He stammered for a moment but shook his head and made up his mind.  
  
Discarding his hesitation, he picked up after her. His stride was a bit longer than hers, and he caught up to her side soon enough. Cyan, Blue, and Red against Red, Yellow and Cyan. The floor was surprisingly quiet against their boots, special structures absorbing the sound to reduce the overall noise pollution of the facility. It was an uneventful walk to the door, and their voices went unused in the leisurely stroll. They could have crossed to the door in an eyeblink if they wanted, but they felt it would be unwise to just barrel in without any reservations. Both were keeping a continual watch with their augmented senses, arm cannons at the ready.  
  
Arne shot the door to make its blue energy field fade and give the signal to the circular door's sections to dilate open. Basic security technology really, more a means to confirm beyond all doubt that the person using the door was either armed or had access to open it automatically. He didn't want to be entirely passive next to Samus even if he often defaulted to her initiative. Yes the details of the plans the two cooked up together were often more his work than hers. But bones of those schemes were born of her mind. Samus gave a small approving nod to him, and the two stepped through the now open entry.  
  
Through the other side was a hallway wide enough for a trio of main battle tanks to drive down in parade formation, stretching into the distance and studded with many sub halls and doors into other rooms. Down the line was a fountain at the centre of an exotic garden where a colourful array of flora was cultivated, the soil enchanted so that plants with entirely different needs could thrive indefinitely without supervision. The botanist in both of them appreciated the sight of such a riot of colour from the leaves, ferns, branches, flowers, and fruit; all illuminated by an orb of glowing light; a spell to beseech everlasting lifegiving radiance from a sphere to banish sickness and encourage faster recovery and an eternal bloom. It was lovely, and Arne briefly hitched his breath while Samus just smiled at the sight.  
  
"I wish we had something to take a few with us." Samus said, eyeing a brilliant blue coloured flower with an intriguing nine layered array of petals that went from tight and rose like to open and sunflowery. She imagined it sitting in a window sill and felt a bit of warmth in her bosom. Something nice and pretty to return to would make all the roughness of the work she was to devote her life to so much more bearable.  
  
"Maybe we can ask when we're done?" Arne posited, raising a brow and turning his head towards her. She was right, he thought; they'd need something gentle to come back to if they were to spend their lives fighting monstrosity and abomination all across the universe. And flowers would...well flowers would go well with their pets, wouldn't they?  
  
"I think I'd like that." Samus said as she took a look around for anything else of interest in the centrepiece of the halls as the two stood amidst the manor sized gardens. Arne let his fingers caress one of the silk-like flower petals before looking back at her as she eyed a tree in full bloom and tilted her head while giving a whistle. She turned her attention back to him and gave him a small thumbs up that he returned. But as nice as this was, the both of them knew they were here for a mission, not sightseeing.  
  
"We should meet up with Spire and Armaud as soon as we can. We'd probably be scored poorly if we lost track of them anyway. Are you with me?" Arne said, confident that the two were waiting for them not too far from the entrances. They'd hardly be proper chaperones if they couldn't be found after all.  
  
"Yeah, it's a bit curious that they weren't at the entryway, but I'm guessing that they want us to find them as one of the early objectives. See if we can link up with allies and all that." She said with a confident smile beneath her helmet.  
  
"Yeah, agreed. We shouldn't have to look too far past one of the map stations. Or we could try to broadcast to them. Buuut I'm guessing that they'll have left some kind of trap for that. Signals can always be cracked if they can be heard after all." He nodded both to Samus and to himself, satisfied that he had figured out a likely trap laid out in this training mission.  
  
"Definitely. They'd have contacted us already if it were only going to be that easy. But right now; I think we should also be ready for trouble. There's going to be resistance soon, I just know it." She said, turning her head towards a place she had her suspicions that trouble would emerge from, a hole large enough for something at least as big as a person to traverse through in the ceiling. Large enough for both of them in fact.  
  
Arne had his own hunch and shot one of the doors, threading the shot through the thicket of branches and leaves to make sure none of the plants was in the least bit harmed. The door some fifty meters away opened up, and he vaulted over the leaves with grace before making a signal to her to come to him as he felt a surge of satisfaction at the sight of a map station vindicating his suspicions. The holographic map of the surrounding area stood there waiting for either one of them to just go forth and claim it, and Samus offered her hand to him as soon as she landed next to him.  
  
The two clasped each other's hands and pulled each other into an affectionate headbutt before moving to the station together to simply touch the hologram and let the information flow in streams of colour into their armour. The first layer of the spiralling maze was now revealed to them, at least in part. Enough for them to have a firm idea of what to expect, which, when paired with their extrasensory perception, would be more than enough for the two to explore more efficiently.  
  
"Well...let's get moving then." Arne said with a soft but pleased expression as he turned around.

The room had not visibly shifted as the pair headed back out of it, but there was a sense of something being amiss. Brief flashes of vision seen only in a sight beyond sight that offered a window into possible danger. Enough to make Samus pause as she narrowed her eyes. She brought a hand in front of Arne and looked at him, tilting her head to the side and gesturing slightly to the right. He immediately understood the meaning of this and tensed himself. He felt it too, an unpleasant and heavy sensation of something about to go wrong. It was like a vice around their minds and a provocation of those finely honed instincts of theirs. A flash of foresight was all they needed to push themselves into action as they acted on the information they got.  
  
Arne ducked himself into the Psycho-Morph, contorting his body into the somewhat torso like floating alternate mode while Samus kickflipped out of the way with the whipcrack of the sound barrier's protests loud and clear. A winged shape spread itself farther and then veered upwards before turning around. Hawklike with a strange head that hinged in a way that it opened upwards rather than downwards like a pair of axes and beady eyes. Claws emerged from its feet as long as fingers and sharp as monomolecular swords. Agility beyond anything that had evolved on earth was on clear display as the man-sized creature gracefully spun around as its tan and blue plumage ruffled with the movement of the air. Their scan visors named it a Frike, and warned them of its tendency to hunt in packs and their biological ability to produce shielding that gave them incredible durability.  
  
The second Frike dived for Arne as he sprung his Psycho-Morph upwards and unfurled, his cannon already at the ready. He didn't bother with the standard power beam and instead escalated straight to the Volt Driver. The air crackled with pulsating, extremely fast moving bolts of hundreds of terajoules of electrical energy, a thunderstorm in every shot all released at one target. The first shot struck with deafening thunder as the electric yellow light tried to expand outwards only to be rebounded by the energy fields of the weapon to focus entirely on the point of impact. The creature's shields held against a few shots, but the fifth broke through, with two more reducing the animal to vapour. Meanwhile, he landed to the side of another swooping feathered fiend and grabbed at its leg. He yanked it to the ground and stomped on its head, crushing through its shield and skull instantly, swift clean and efficient.  
  
Samus yanked at the one that overshot her with her grapple beam fired from her left hand, pulling the thing towards her. She caught with her distant sight the sensation of another arriving and swung the one she had entangled into its counterpart, the two crashing with a thunderclap that left the two open to a quick burst from her ice beam. The anti-energy of the weapon quickly sapped at their fields, converting them into ice as the temperatures around them plummetted to let her finish them off with a quick missile. The warhead materialised into being from her willpower and rocketed off at hypersonic speeds to crash into them before they could respond; a reverberating detonation rewarding her with a brief red blossom of light and shattered frozen dust as she scanned for other threats. Not precisely standard tactics, but it worked, didn't it?  
  
"Predators usually aren't this hostile to anything close to them in size," Arne said as he sidestepped another swoop, the extended claws of the fiendish flier almost sounding like they were cutting the very air itself as it tried to turn around to bite him with a murderous clack of its jaws. "So something's clearly up." He shoved his light hand's wrist blade into their mouth and then swiped to the right to cut its head apart, grunting when he felt the resistance of the bioshield and its energy reinforcement that tried to resist the power fields of his blade before overpowering the obstacle.  
  
"They're not hungry, they're being enraged by an outside force." She said, her keen eyes picking up on their expressions even as they danced around each other at paces to put fighter jets to shame. She felt terrible, they were just animals and meant her no real malice. They were still threats that had forced a life or death confrontation, with her distant sight informing her that trying to freeze them or paralyse them with her stun weapons would only be a temporary solution; but the slaughter of wildlife just didn't sit well with her. It felt so...profane.  
  
"Any ideas?" Arne said as Samus looked at him and pulled him in with her arm cannon's grapple beam, getting a brief yelp out of him as he was moved out of the way of an unusually large Frike that made a shockwave upon impacting the ground where he had been a nanosecond before. He muttered his thanks to her as she quickly fired the ice beam as rapidly as she could. The temperature in the room plummeted each time the ice beam's frozen packets found their mark, transforming energy into thick layers of frigid, solidified water to prevent movement. A quick firewall solution for the dozen or so enemies the duo faced. It was only a temporary solution, but she'd rather use it to buy time than continue the butchery. He figured out her plan quickly and shot at the door behind them as the two backpedalled through before she let him go and gave him a nod.  
  
"Okay...now that we're here, I think it's probably some sort of psionic agitation. It must be something we're not familiar with though, I can't feel it myself." She said. She took a look around the room, just a linear hallway with some murals on either side though she could see there was a fork in the pathway at the end. The map in her memory told her that the way to her left would take her to a large rectangular room, while the room to the right would lead them to a gently descending place of somewhat smaller size but greater length. Her distant sight gave her the gut feeling of needing to go left first, and with that, she turned her mind back to the more immediate mystery of the strange hostility of the animals after murmuring her apologies once again for having to take their lives in self-defence.  
  
"It might not be audible to us? Like a dog whistle. If it's meant to work on nonsophonts, then there's no need to make the signal audible by tool using sophonts." He agreed with her conclusion but just felt the need to chip in with his own comment.  
  
"Yeah, that would make sense. It can't be part of the test though, papa wouldn't let animals get hurt in trials like this." She said with obvious concern written all over her face that he could just about picture through her helmet as she set her blue visor to a more transparent state to let him see her eyes, a gesture he responded to in kind.  
  
"So...any ideas on what's causing it then?" Arne asked, leaning on a wall in the hall and taking a moment to let the gears of his brain turn. Trying to compare the evidence he had gathered against what facts he had on his hands. Several ideas came up, most were discarded by the unlikeliness that any of them would ever manage to breach this facility. That frustrated him, he didn't like the thought of not being able to unpack something in front of him. The feeling of intellectual impotence annoyed him, and Samus could feel it radiate from him.  
  
But for her part? She was also stumped. Her brain was a vast library of knowledge augmented by some of the most sophisticated computers any human had ever had the good fortune of interfacing with. Yet nothing fit the parameters she was given. The Space Pirates wouldn't even know how to get to this planet, the mysterious agents who attacked Cylosis would have to roam awfully far from their last known location to go all the way here, and no other power she knew of had the means or the motive to do something like this...  
  
"Maybe we're overthinking it? It might just be those animals?" He said before he froze and stood straighter, turning his head rightwards towards the fork in the room. Something did not rest easy in the pit of his stomach. Sensation like slithering serpents coiled around in his body and his muscles began to tense beneath his armour. Something was off, and all signs were telling him to investigate.  
  
"You feel that, right?" He asked, waiting for her affirmation.  
  
"Definitely, probably another creature. You go first, you're the short-range guy. I'll cover you. That sound good?" She said, smiling with validation when he gave her a nod to acknowledge.  
  
"I was thinking that too. It's probably in ambush position, so I'll draw it out." He said, with her giving him a thumbs-up gesture that he enthusiastically returned with a small smirk beneath his helmet. Already starting to walk again, moving at a quick jogging pace with her in brisk pursuit, he had already taken stock of the room. There was something waiting for them at the midway point of the fork. He could sense it just before the little sill of plant life that sat in front of a pleasing set of hieroglyphs that he parsed as a parable meant to encourage the welcoming of travellers and the virtues of hospitality. A moment passed, the whole of the story was read, internalised, analysed, and critiqued in the space of time for it to get himself into position.  
  
He counted the fractions of a second for it all to fall into place as he scooped up and tossed a rock to create the impression of movement before diving to the side to get himself into position. His arm cannon clicked, and its highlights switched to deep indigo as he set his cannon to yet another weapon, feeling that it would come in handy shortly. Something flashed in his mind, and he stopped his dive and used a single arm to throw him into a punch flip as another creature descended from an opening to the areas above, having seen through his ruse and adjusted its movements to try and catch him as he moved.  
  
The sight of a ruddy coloured tendril lashing forward to occupy the area he did in the space of time it took for dust disturbed by his movement to detach from the wall was all he needed to get his scan visor working. "Regordim", a large ambush predator that relied largely on its lengthy tentacles to overwhelm foes with reach to keep its more vulnerable organs out of harm's way. Unfortunately for it, the Blizzard Subweapon was well suited for something like this. The beam let out howling streams of bitter anti-energy that annihilated the very heat and movement of the air and encased it in snow and ice, a continual stream not too different from the shock coil that let him ice over one of its tendrils while Samus froze two more coming his way just as he ducked down to let them hit the surfaces where he had been.  
  
Another click, his arm cannon had changed to blue highlights as it readied the shock coil; hers turned purple and expanded horizontally with the electrowave beam. From her came seeking tripartite reddish-purple orbs of powerful electromagnetic fields, from him came unrelenting voltage like a lightning storm every passing moment. The creature howled as its body convulsed from the powerful surge of voltage that had pulsed through its form, and both youths latched onto it with a grapple beam to yank the bulbous, spider-like body from its roost; the beast's legs going slack and thus avoiding snapping beneath force to move warships. A central body the size of a triceratops slumped onto the ground in a pathetic heap and writhed with leftover electrical aftershocks.  
  
Arne offered words of calming to soothe the beast's pain, and his gauntlet extended a syringe from the wrist to inject some of the biological repair attomachines that the armour used to keep him healthy. He waited a moment, and the creature's movements began to still as the little machines fabricated and released sedatives to calm it while they ran a diagnostic of what might be altered within the beast. Though his view of nature was not quite so reverential as his partner's, avoiding unnecessary slaughter of wildlife was still important to him. All organic thinking beings are the descendants of or at least the products of what they would consider wild creatures, after all.  
  
"Thanks for the assist." He said to Samus.  
  
"What? Nah, you had that under control. It's just nice to do stuff together with you." She said playfully.  
  
"Oh? Well...it seemed like I had the last room under control too." He said with a snort.  
  
"Well maybe but my way was better, no?" The cheek in her words was positively tangible.  
  
"Well I guess it worked, but could you say it was better?" He said, quirking a brow.  
  
"Arne, it saved us some time and some of the wildlife their lives. Of course, it worked out better." She said, resting a hand on his shoulder after stepping up to him and pulling him into an elbow bump before turning to the Regordim and having her own overview of it. For his part though, Arne wondered if Samus would always be able to find ways to live up to her aspirations of minimising harm to even nonsapient obstacles in her way. It was a noble idea, and he'd like to live up to it but maybe...he'd think about that later, Samus was about to give her opinion.  
  
"It seems pretty normal to me now that it's in a medically induced sleep...but if I'm getting the readings right, the tranquilisers made by your attomachines would suppress dreaming yeah?" She said, an idea forming in her head as she kneeled down and pet the tick like head of the Redorgim, finding a sort of rugged beauty even to the arachnid esque mouthparts and compound eyes of the carapaced creature as she prayed for its health and well being.  
  
"So it might affect the parts of the brain responsible for dreaming then? That might explain why they don't seem to care about injury. They're basically sleepwalking with their eyes open. That'd be an awful way to die though...blessed gods now I feel kind of bad for killing some of them." Arne said, a theory now taking root in his head even as his voice grew small.  
  
Samus cringed at the thought. To be lost in the haze of a dream but still be acting in the real world would be a terrifying loss of control, one that rankled at both her free spirit and her beliefs in the sanctity of dreaming. She'd put an end to this, whatever was causing it. Nobody could be allowed to do something like this without being made to account for it.  
  
She pulled away from the creature and gave him a signal that she was ready to get going, walking at a close enough distance that they could support each other in melee, but far apart enough that they wouldn't get in each other's way. About a meter and a half apart. A distance that felt far greater to the two's hearts, but the necessities of combat mandated they be able to swing their wrist blades at a standard extension without bumping into one another even if their weapons were tuned to do no harm to each other; the simple disruption of having to dodge possible impact could throw them off. But they moved with purpose, ignoring the skittering, six-limbed cat-sized and rodent-like "Skriltas" which despite their scan visors saying would attack if directly impeded; were easy enough to avoid as they clung to the walls to scavenge for food. The door to the left was just ahead, and they need only go through.  
  
The turrets that emerged from the next room were immediately shot at when they descended to open fire on those going through the now available door. Long and triangular and attached through deceptively simple-looking struts, they never got the chance to hum with power before Samus hit the first with a super missile and Arne latched onto the second with a fatal shock coil burst. Those at least were supposed to be obstacles there; that they knew. And they needed only the briefest moment for their minds to analyse the room. Rectangular as they expected, separated into three terraced levels with the topmost level leading to a door with an already breached missile lock.  
  
Easy enough, even the circling, trapezoid winged wasp-like drones that emerged from the sides were of little concern. Quick bursts of power beam fire were all they needed to quickly work their way through their defences, a thicket of thirty of the torso sized things reduced to scrap before the debris of the first could hit the ground as Samus sprinted, curled into her spherical form and charged up a boost to smash through one of the manufacturing hives for the wasp drones, crushing the trailer sized machinery into pieces. Bursting out of the ruins of her hypersonic impact, she ducked beneath a three-shot missile barrage from Arne as he targeted some of the larger drones who had tried to vertically flank her. The glare of the blossoming explosions filtered out by her helmet as she immediately struck the next hive with her ice beam just before Arne smashed it with a casual swipe of his hand, letting the shockwave of the passage of his appendage do the work of rupturing the cold embrittled device.  
  
Arne nodded at her as Samus quickly glanced in her direction. With a flick of his wrist, he projected a grapple beam at her to yank her towards him. Before she could collide with him he swung her around to let her use her arm blade to cut an incoming wave of drones to pieces. With that threat passed, he tossed her at the door with a release of his grip. She was sent flying at tremendous speed augmented by her own push, hurtling through the air like a comet until she approached her destination, where she turned herself around to let her legs extend and then smashed open the missile lock with a room-shaking dropkick. She gracefully fired off the jump systems in her boots to kick-off as the armoured locks broke apart to land back on her feet. She nodded, satisfied with herself while Arne shredded through a dozen remaining machines in his way before vaulting onto the largest one he found, shoving his blade into its head and then flipping off as the machine dropped downwards.  
  
"You could have done that faster if you used more firepower. They were pretty clumped up, you could have used some missiles." Samus said as he stood himself up.  
  
"But what if I needed those missiles later? Zurvduat would throw a fit if I went with overkill straight away." He said while the door ahead of them retracted open to let the two youths through.  
  
"It's easy to get more missiles, it's just...We can convert quintessence into ammo, there are ammo stations, we can even concentrate on conjuring fresh missiles. So what's the point of all these ways to resupply ammo on the field if we don't use them? " She said as the two took one last look around. Other doors on the flanks of the terraces remained unopened as the two youngsters' armoursuits designated this area a safe return point for their emergency teleport systems. But her foresight told her that the way to go was forward, so she urged him to follow.

The next room was a series of moving platforms with obstacles placed in the way, the faint signature of the energies used to warp space to teleport this obstacle course in place of the lounge room that this was supposed to lead to still heavy in the air with a faint trace of ozone stench. Turrets, energy lashes, swarms of psycho-bits hovering around looking for targets and a large sheer drop down several hundred meters onto a floor arcing with tremendous jolts of electricity and glowing with heat. The fall itself would be harmless to them of course, but the floor itself was humming with an electric current potent enough to damage their shielding while the bolts of electricity that occasionally erupted forth had the power of the thunderstorms in gas giants roiling through them. Survivable but certainly unpleasant. The obstacle course was about a kilometer across, and the obstacles were moving swift enough for their helmets to have to scan and translate the air vibrations into sound for them to properly "hear" their movement without the issues of sonic lag.  
  
Easy enough.  
  
The portals for the Psycho-Bits to receive reinforcements from were quickly neutralised from a distance with careful Imperialist fire from both of their arm cannons, ruby red laser pulses striking across the distance with little delay and silencing the translucent conical vortices from which the machines drew more of their kind from. Arne then continued to pick off the Psycho-Bits. At the same time, Samus decided to just dash through the course as fast as she could, charging up a beam shot to let the beam's energies wreathe around her suit as she somersaulted, using her thrusters on her boots and back to add extra jumps and aerial dashes in tandem with grapple swings as needed to dodge around obstacles before landing again to allow for Arne to catch up once he had cleared the farther ahead hurdles.  
  
For his part, he not only cleared many of the obstacles, but he shot at them to disable them. A few bursts from his cryogenic weapons being released to seal up the emitters in some ice to prevent them from working any time soon while his form hurtled, spun, and dodged around all manner of intervening threats. With a final clink of his armour as he landed against the wall and then propelled himself off of it followed by a surprisingly quiet thud as he landed on his feet and pushed himself up, he stood up to his feet and urged his compatriot onwards. With the preparatory work already done by Arne, the rest of the trip was mostly uneventful, and the two crossed through the next door shortly after; brimming with confidence now that things had seemed to settle back down to normal.  
  
A sensation went down the two's spines as soon as they crossed through the short connecting hall; read through the logs in the wall terminals; and stepped into the next room. Something was just a bit off. Things had been moved to where they shouldn't be, and there was debris from some sort of fight within the cylindrical room concentrated around the floating circular platform above the two. The alcoves of the chamber built into the wall lead to yet further doors in the different levels, making it clear that this was a hub of sorts. But as she studied the twelve entries in the room, Samus briefly felt the sensation of being watched and turned her head upwards to catch a glimpse of something. At first, she thought it was a set of curved spines before she realised it was the horns of something grey and yellow coloured with metallic textures and an almost chiselled and geometric sort of appearance vaguely evocative of more simplified statues. But she barely got more than a glimpse of them, and they were gone before she could be sure of what she was seeing.  
  
"Arne?" She asked.  
  
"Yeah I saw it too." He said, flooding her with a quick sensation of relief that it was probably not just her imagination.  
  
She felt a renewed sense of worry at the thought that it was probably real, and her distant sight gave her an unsettling sensation in the pit of her stomach. Was this part of the mission? It certainly didn't seem like it, she thought as the debris in the room started to dematerialise as reclamation transmatters in the facility digitised them and broke them down into energy to be converted into other forms of matter later. Neither Armaud nor Spire, of whom there was still no sign of either, wore horns of any sort on their helmet and they indeed weren't grey and white. She briefly remembered some of the stories she was told by the Chozo to help her sleep...monsters vanquished in a long distant era who had often worn horns on their helmet and were clad in metal hewn like a rock. But could that have truly been one of the old monsters under the bed?  
  
"Are you alright?" Arne asked.  
  
"I'm f-.." Samus stopped herself from lying. "No...what I saw reminded me of some of the storybook monsters." She said, looking at him with a frown on her lips.  
  
"But that can't be right...can it?" She said, looking at him and tilting her head. "They're all supposed to be gone in the stories." Whatever truth there was to the bedtime stories, they were all supposed to have been banished to the realm of dusty tomes and ancient datalogs in time immemorial. Long before humans had ever conceived that the stars in the night sky were nuclear furnaces and not the manifestation of gods or the spirits of the dead.  
  
"In a place beyond distance." Arne completed for her. "I...I'm not sure what it is honestly, but if it's not supposed to be here, I think we should check with Armaud and Spire first. We shouldn't go after it alone." He said, clearly sharing some of his own worries. Worry enough to step closer as if to shield Samus from whatever was spying on her and seek security with proximity. She could sense his disquiet and felt his need to latch on to something for protection, and she found her hand briefly interlacing with his. Reassurance for both of them.  
  
"Agreed." She said, raising their interlocked hands up to chest level and letting their thumbs rub against each other's hands. It felt almost as though they had nothing to separate their skin from one another, and they let that moment linger for a few seconds more before breaking it up.  
  
Arne stopped them before they could start walking again as he looked at the centre of the room and pointed to an indent. The intent behind it was apparent, and she was quick to roll into her spherical form and move atop the indent to drop a single bomb to burst the covers of what was quickly found to be a switch that only needed her to drop a second bomb to trigger it. Something that immediately filled her with anticipation as Arne backed away, and the platform began to open up.  
  
A Chozo statue fell from within the platform, like a hatchling emerging from its egg. Falling into the midst of the room as Samus sprung out of the switch to let the covers of the switch rematerialize, the two felt a bit of ease as the Chozo statue, rested in a pretzel legged position and coloured a rich orange primarily, split its cupped hands holding a sphere into two outstretched sets of talons, each now holding a separate orb.  
  
Samus was immediately interested and cracked open the sphere around the power-ups. She saw a sigil of a stylised figure fading, with a more apparent figure above them. Curious, she looked to Arne who decided he may as well try to reach for it first. But not to be outdone, she had grabbed onto at the same time. Their armours glowed with light briefly as their suits analysed and absorbed the technology, letting it break into energy that coalesced into a ball that then flowed into their chests.  
  
Their armours shifted slightly, glowing strips now attaching to the sides of abdominal plating in hand-sized pieces of metal the same colour as their arm cannons, running from beneath their chest plates to above their hip guards. Fitted with highlights the same colour as their visors, the two were given a suit update informing them that they had just installed "Blink Packs" into their armours, giving them the ability to refine the teleportation systems built into their suits to move to places they had either line of sight to or at least enough data on to move into. Their armours informed them that in the event of accidental teleportation into inanimate objects, they'd be shunted the shortest distance out, as would be the case for living beings, though sufficiently weakened enemies or objects could be teleported into to finish them off.  
  
And as if to provide them with a test, the room itself seemed to transform as space was warped with the grace of a master violinist. In a moment it had expanded into an array of shifting platforms that soon settled into a more static position save for a handful of still moving ones. More pertinent to them, however, was the switch to deactivate the barriers that had shuttered over the doors, shielded by a translucent screen of energy.  
  
But something else bothered them, something that both felt in the pit of their stomachs and the corner of their minds. Something was coming, even without their prescience that much was blindingly obvious. The two pulled away from the statue as it shifted itself out of sync with the rest of reality to avoid becoming party to what was to come; a shimmering ghost image marking where it would return once the threat had passed.  
  
Then came the challenge, a pair of shapes fizzled into being with a swarm of yellow-white light particles that clung onto one another and then coalesced into what were clearly taloned legs. The soft porcelain whites, golds, and cyan highlights of the figures and their seemingly gracile construction made it clear that they were the work of the Ylla; Syndrans. Spindly taloned arms emerged from narrow inverted trapezoid like torsos attached to inverted triangle like waists. Mighty hands with seven fingers appeared at the end of long and metallic armatures that connected into flared shoulders that jutted upwards in an askew manner somewhat akin to half of a pelvis. In between their shoulders lay slender and elegant heads shaped something like a smoothed humanoid cranium with a pair of backwards swept fins like those of a whale emerging from the temples and a trio of cyan optics staring out from the centre, golden embroidery almost appearing to hold the porcelain-like plating together.  
  
Digitigrade legs stepped forward with alarming speed and the reticulated spinal column of the machines flexed to let them rear up higher as they made their judgements of the two intruders who had deigned to make use of the technology they guarded. They were worthy of taking it with them, but not without a fight. Their thin rail limbs thickened with an incantation as they disregarded the laws of conservation as casually as one might jaywalk across a street to prepare themselves for battle. Additional plates of armour and artificial muscle mass manifested around them with every step while the two kids backed away slightly, anticipating the fight to come. Technosorcerous energies hung heavy in the air as these marvellous works of mysticism and technology strode forwards, runic inscriptions on their plating glowing with higher intensity.  
  
Arne steeled himself as the one closest to him reached its hand out and let a platinum, gold and cyan basket-hilted sword manifest in its hand in a fizzle of white light, somewhat narrow and claymore like and glowing with a cyan highlight running down its middle as the blade began to glow with energy. Its other hand soon repeated the gesture, and with a single easy twirl, it skidded its sword tips against the floor. The second transformed its hands into a pair of arm cannons, proportioned like the barrels of tripod-mounted machine guns before thickening and then splitting into six distinct barrels on each arm; arrayed in a rotary pattern. The barrels were allowed to spin, whirring to life as the machine bulked itself up to proportions better suited for heavy-duty endurance combat than trying to compete with the nimbleness of the two youths, it's now almost heroic seeming figure adding an extra intimidation factor to the guardian.  
  
The two's visors offered them the sage advice that they should be aware that Syndrans can rapidly adjust their bodies and weapons to better suit changing battlefield conditions or switch up strategies. However, damage to their bodies would force them to divert from adaptation and towards repair, naturally forcing it to split its attention between both by constantly varying attack patterns and damage types would offer the best results. The two's newly acquired blink packs would be useful in getting around them to spread out the damaged areas and deny them the ability to focus their adaptations and reparative efforts in any one place. But this also meant that they couldn't rely on any singular weapon or technique to deal with these foes.  
  
A worthy fight then.

Samus moved; first, she willed the blink packs to activate and designated a position behind the Syndran at one of the alcoves while her arm cannon clicked to ready the super missiles. She felt space warp around her body, her soul allowing and preparing for this sort of transition with her mind aflame with thoughts of her destination and her plan for action. She twisted herself just the moment before the teleportation happened, and existence stretched briefly into infinity. Working on the fly, she just thought of what seemed like it'd work and decided to carry through with it. She'd be able to adjust the plan if needed if something came up after all.

Already pushing herself into a spin, once she had teleported the momentum carried her into the proper position to fire at her enemy as the universe seemed to snap back into place like a rubber band. Her cannon rotated and clicked, expanding its outer fringes and widening itself a bit to accept the bore of the super missiles she planned to fire. And with a brief shivering sensation she released a gift of armageddon just as she caught sight of Arne launching himself into his altmode to bank out of the way of a diagonal slash and the crescent of cyan energy it released. This should help keep some pressure off him, she thought.

Green tipped warheads materialised and raced out of her cannon at incredible speeds with white contrails hurriedly following behind them. One, two, three impacts before the gunner shifted its body to face her. Even with the force shaping systems of the missiles, the detonations still made the room shake as if an earthquake had rattled it. Even with three of those seismically significant impacts, her enemy seemed none the worse for wear and her eyes caught the spooling up of the barrels as they started to rotate, light beginning to reach her eyes and her brain already reacting to psychic impulses telling her where the shots would be going. But she wasn't planning to stand still.

She flipped herself and let out two further super missiles into the head of the Syndran while she charged up the blade that emerged from her left gauntlet. Coruscating white anti-energy tuned to not interfere with her shielding or armour and frost quickly built up around the wrist sword with plummeting temperatures. She didn't need to have her face exposed to know the sensation of the arctic chill emanating from it, but she did get the proper feedback from stabbing the sword into the shield. Energy shielding would have failed quickly against this sort of weapon as ice exploded outwards from it. Still, the fractaline shielding was made of sterner stuff, and only pulsed as runes on the Syndran glowed, and the machine's optics started to intensify their luminosity.

Time to go. She thought as she flipped off of it and let her electrowave beam cut loose with a fully charged purple orb of ball lightning. The static burst of sound erupting from her cannon while her foe's guns were spitting out a frenzy of cyan light that she found herself forced to dodge around.

Not too far away, Arne considered his options quickly. His foe was able to transform themselves into ranged or melee forms, so it didn't matter what range he sought to engage them from, but they were much taller than he was and would necessarily need more room to move their limbs into position. Thus he settled on the course of attacking head-on, dodging around a diagonal and a low horizontal sweep and jumping over a stomp produced shockwave just in time to grab at its wrists and flip himself around, vaulting off of it and letting his shock coil scream to life. Clearing his mind, he looked behind the machine and imagined himself behind the thing while mentally commanding his suit to engage the teleport. He blinked, he fired off thrusters to rotate himself and bring his blade to bear; crackling with unfathomable electrical power output and stabbing downwards.

The machine jolted briefly, and its runes started to shimmer as he jetted himself over another attempted swing and swung his leg around fast enough to outpace its sound many times over. The kick made a deafening shockwave as it staggered the machine, the lad using the momentum of the kick's recoil and his thrusters to push himself back towards the ground where he caught himself with one hand. Not letting his enemy recover, he staccoed out a triple burst of charged missiles. Just as he had been taught, he had to prevent his foe from recovering their battle flow and deny them focus. Similarly, he was drilled with the knowledge that he needed to switch up his methods against an adaptive enemy. His opponent pushed themselves off of a column after stagging into it and he once again teleported.

This time he was at its chest, his arm cannon's highlights glowing a hot orange as it widened itself and clicked into star beam position. Pulsing globules of thermonuclear fury erupted against the machine, making it almost seem like it was groaning before he felt a sudden sense of alarm. Using his thrusters to push himself to the side, he just about avoided being clotheslined by the Syndran as it developed a set of thrusters and raced forwards in an attempted tackle to crush him. He huffed with relief, but the machine arrested its momentum and stabbed its sword towards him, forcing him back and upwards, jetting himself backwards and curling into his alt mode to duck beneath the other blade.

"Switch up!" He said to Samus who nodded as she grabbed at him with a grapple tether and swung him towards her foe, blinking out of the way of a missile barrage before it could make an impact to bring herself face to face with the melee Syndran.

She fired off the ice beam at its feet, letting the anti-energy impact of the ice beam's projectiles explode into bursts of frost that enveloped most of its legs from a few quick shots, preventing it from moving properly for a few moments. Of course, even all this ice could not stop it from breaking free by expanding its barrier and shifting its legs, rupturing the obstruction and allowing it to move freely once again. She leapt over the next stomp's shockwave, rolled under a crescent slash and seemed to be in the clear as she tried to focus on where to teleport. Before her mind could reach out to engage the blink system, she was struck by a chopping motion from the sword now that her avenues of movement were boxed in. She felt a rattle through her body from her suit's feedback systems as the blow forced her to the ground with a heavy thud and a significant loss of shielding.

She didn't allow herself the luxury of being disoriented for too long however and rolled into the morph ball with a swing of her legs to evade the machine's optical beams, boosting between its legs and rolling away with a thundercrack. She rolled up a curved section of wall and then rocketed right back into the machine's back to knock it forward, dropping a burst of bombs to further overwhelm it. Immediately, she uncurled out of the morph ball and switched up her arm cannon once again, allowing the Imperialist to split the air with a laser shot directly into the head of the Syndran. This was the extra push needed to make it fall on its face in the space of time a bullet could be primed. She hit the ground and cheered herself a little, but let out a yelp as she had to hop and then dash out of the way of a horizontal sweep slash and a follow up vertical slice from the foe as its runes lit up and its body shifted around to return itself to its feet.

Only meters away, Arne swung his blade to deflect a storm of incoming shots from the rotary guns, twitching his arms around as necessary as he sent each energy projectile careening away from him with carefully timed sweeps. To most, the rotary guns created a solid beam of bolts with a continual droning whine of firing, but his reflexes were literally lightning-fast, and his warning sense allowed him to find the best angles to set up his defence. With the other gun aiming towards him, however, he had to act fast and made a careful sweep and duck to both move out of the line of fire and redirect the light energy back to the sender, causing the machine to stagger before he teleported away. The machine had predicted his likely course and spat out a burst of warheads in his direction, his distant sight alarming him as soon as he arrived. Despite his reflexes and precognition, this storm was not possible to avoid by any means short of time travel or a teleport system that wasn't ready yet. More than a few detonations clipped him by fencing him in with intelligently placed airbursts, setting him up for one to throw him back into the wall.

Breathing hard, he looked at a large missile heading his way and grabbed at it with his grapple beam before tossing it back at the gunner Syndran, bowling the machine over with a massive crash and giving him just a bit of space to operate. But already, it was picking itself up, damage dealt already repairing itself. He tried to pull the thing towards him with a pair of grapple beams, one from his left arm and one from his arm cannon and grunted as he entered into a tug of war with enough force to pull a ship in twain. He succeeded in overcoming his foe's strength and threw it to the ground once more, but as he pulled it towards him, the Syndran used its proximity to grab him and toss him aside, hitting the floor with a hard roll and further lost shielding and a jolt of unpleasant feedback.

Samus spent a moment to concentrate, clenching her fist to reinvigorate her shielding as she tried to collect herself. She caught a vision of danger approaching her in the immediate future and went into motion; kick flipping out of the path of hip launched plasma grenades that exploded in brilliant green flashes of energy. She was not entirely safe yet and ignited her thrusters to backflip while still in the air when she sensed that the grenades had secondary munitions before teleporting away from the next volley. Stellar heat and a roaring detonation raced through the room, but she was safely out of harm's way while she let her power beam strike home repeatedly at the gunner before landing near Arne. Now repositioned, she fired off a pair of charged ice beam shots at the gunner's guns top cap things off while the boy siphoned off fresh energy with his shock coil. The screaming tether of electricity leeched power from its foe while she charged and released a quick trio of shots, each one resounding through the room with noise and intent.

"We need to focus on one of them at a time, they're adapting too quickly to fight separately," Samus said, getting a nod of affirmation from Arne. The two separated briefly, Arne dodging around a missile barrage but taking a clawed foot to the chest from the swordsman machine, hitting the wall and grunting before peeling off. He looked up and gasped in quick alarm before bringing up his arm blade against the downward swing of the foe. The ground cracked beneath his boots while he strained against astronomical pressure, groaning in discomfort. Still, he managed to push up slightly and escape the blade lock with the aid of an Imperialist strike from Samus. Such a shot had been made mid-air as she dodged around the cluster bombs of her opponent, teleporting to the side to elude damage only to be caught out by the eye beams and hurtled backwards, righting herself to land near Arne again.

"Right...the sword-swinging one's the more dangerous of the two in this kind of environment. Maybe we could try some Thermal shock?" He proposed.

"...I like that idea." She said with a feral grin beneath her helmet.

"Head or limbs?" He asked.

"Limbs, it'll have back up sensors for the head, but taking out an arm might do it." She said as the two flipped out of the way of a sword swing and dodged a sweep of weapons fire while he struck out with the shock coil and she bombarded her foe with missile fire. The blade's cyan arc made an audible buzz as it went through the air, an incoming thrust fitting neatly between them as the dashed in separate directions before boosting up when the blade was rotated and fired off cutting waves to either side.

"Okay, I can handle that." Arne said, more to himself than anyone else. The gunner had by now freed its weapons of its icy prisons and transformed its weapons to arcing mortars, forcing them to concede ground to the carpet of crimson detonations that was sent their way so that they could reconvene. Some projectiles were shot out of the air to leave globules of energy and regents their suits could use to convert into missile and universal ammo, but they were forced to back away to cover.

"First we need to hit that shielding as hard as we can. You go high, I'll go low; focus on the melee one." Arne said while the two grabbed onto the rapidly firing gunner with their grapple beams and pulled it into the path of the other, letting its weapons unload into its ally until it managed to stop its fire. While these weapons were keyed to do no harm to its comrade, the interruption of firing lanes and the need to reorient had caused the disruption they needed. Samus rushed in on instinct to exploit with a quick teleport, getting in a long hacking strike with the arm blade to make the swordsman's shielding spark up, leaving them open for Arne to sprint at them until his form was enveloped in cyan energies. With a jump, he rammed into them at speeds sufficient to carry him out of the atmosphere if his momentum were not arrested by the collision; the shielding of the machine finally bursting from the impact.

The melee machine groaned and reconfigured its left arm to bear a scutum like shield to offer it greater protection while the two youths raced around it firing what they could. The other machine was not idle however and released a spray of submunition missiles overhead that hovered in the air momentarily. This quiet lasted only a tiny fraction of a second before it was interrupted as the missiles split into smaller warheads that streamed directly downwards, hemming in avenues of escape to make the job of the warheads meant to seek them out easier to throw them to the ground. But before they could recover, the melee Syndran made its own move to exploit, scraping its shield against the floor to throw them back before they could take a moment to get back on their feet and knocking them into the air. The incoming stomp and crescent slash caught them, pushing them back further and costing them some further energy.

They still had some energy tanks to spare, but they needed to turn the tide fast; Samus thought as she caught herself on her feet while Arne landed on his left hand and vaulted himself back into a standing position, the two engaging their teleports to regroup. Arne laid his hand on her shoulder and opened up with his shock coil, concentrating on transferring the energy he leeched from the gunner Syndran into her suit's shielding as was protocol. Help allies first before yourself. It wasn't too much before they had to get moving again, throwing themselves into their altmodes, but it was enough. They rocketed forwards as hot debris exploded outwards and spraying the area with hypervelocity fragments that pinged harmlessly off of their shielding before they rushed around the swordsman and unleashed their munitions upon it. The armour plating hissed and sparked at the impacts but held even when the two uncurled and readied themselves to fire off electric weapons; his Volt Driver and her Paralyctor surging power through the machine before it had adapted to the concussive bomb impacts.

Vaulting onto a higher level, Samus shot out some incoming missiles to free up energy and matter for conversion by their suits into supplies. Switching modes in her arm cannon she charged up her Ice Beam; vacuuming in some of those supplies to stock up once again, but simple resupply wasn't her objective. She aimed and fired her weapon to strike at the gunner Syndran and take it temporarily out of the occasion by freezing over its head.

At the same time, Arne let energy collect into his arm cannon to reap some of the spoils Samus had sown before it unleashed a torso sized sphere of molten starstuff. The ongoing reactions of the star beam's charge shot roiled before the orb latched onto the arm of the Syndran, burning away at temperatures higher than those found in virtually any star. Already the Syndran's armour was changing to adapt to the heat, shifting to retain structural viability before the star beam's charge blast went supernova and exploded in a contained blast. But these adaptations would be met with Samus firing another charged ice beam shot, directly at the afflicted limb. The anti-energy induced thermal shock rapidly cooled and fragmented the arm enough for a charged missile from Arne who had blinked sufficiently closed to prevent it from moving the limb out of the way to promptly blow it off entirely with a deafening shattering noise.

Samus audibly cheered at the glorious sight while Arne let out an exhilarated laugh. The machine tried to regather energy to account for the damaged limb, trying already to regrow it, but Samus was already on it, teleporting into the ideal path to start running. Now in a sprint, she let speed booster carry her forwards as a hypersonic comet, coruscating energy fields surrounding her to turn her into a frenzied buzzsaw of destruction as she slammed into the machine's head and burnt away at its faceplate. However, she had not merely tackled the machine but had pointed her arm blade forward to dig it into the machine's body, and once she felt that the sword was solidly inside, she fired off her shinespark and pushed herself downwards. The momentum carving the synthetic in half; their armours latching onto the freed up energies of the machine to recharge their shielding and resupply precious munitions. She hit the ground running, already releasing super missiles into her foe as fast as she was able.

Arne was not idle either, his own arm cannon expanding itself diagonally somewhat and taking on sickly green highlights while miasmic patterns danced in the diagonal ridges of his cannon before it stabbed outwards with head-sized comets of crackling noxious energies that made the sound of a small glass-breaking each time it fired. Doctrine dictated that he should use something that his foe hadn't seen before from him to overwhelm its adapting shielding, and he had yet to make use of the Decay Beam due to its general weakness against shielding. And indeed, the gunner, However, it would keep the foe distracted from Samus making use of the Electrowave beam's charged shots to present it with the difficult choice of which attack to adapt to; making sure to vary his patterns with periodic missile bursts to not make that choice too easy to make.

Making a split-second decision to dodge around a barrage of solar spheres that spat out cyan lances of energy towards them; the two disappeared once again. A flash of yellow and blue energy and the rubberbanding of spacetime heralded them appearing from behind with another burst of light. A pair of grapple beam tethers emerged from Arne to rip the Syndran off of its footing, straight into the path of Samus who launched herself into a side flip to add extra momentum to an arm cannon smash that pounded its head into the ground. The air split asunder with the shockwave of the blow and the room rumbled from the force as she once again regained her footing. Before the next fraction of a second had passed, her leg sailed in a horizontal arc faster than a coil gun's round for a cycle kick to toss the foe like a ragdoll.

Arne pulled the launched machine back towards him with his grapple beam to headbutt it back into the ground before it could recover its balance. Now with its shielding splintered, he fired off his decay beam at full blast, a noxious comet exploding with a pronounced shattering sound against the now exposed armour. Sensing weakness; he checked the incoming limb of the Syndran as it tried to grab him, pushing and twisting it aside in a tug of war and shoved his arm cannon into the struck area. His arm cannon expanded vertically much as Samus did when it shifted to ice beam mode. Blue-cyan energy coiled around as Cherenkov radiation built up within even as the machine tried to stand up again, Samus freezing a leg in place and grabbing at an arm and pulling back with incredible force. The Positron beam, a weapon he was usually expected to reserve for foes that required it for the sake of appropriate force for the appropriate situation. And if this wasn't an appropriate time what was?

He sunk his fingers into the armour plating, feeling it shift around them and readied his positron beam. He charged and released the electric stream of anti-matter, a thick arcing bolt exploding into the construct and producing a deafening thunderclap that would in and of itself, be a deadly weapon able to rupture high-grade steel and concrete. With the armour weakened sufficiently, he tensed his fingers and braced his feet before kicking off with his thrusters, tearing a large chunk of alloy arrayed by the atom for durability free and landing on his feet. Shaking off the metal as Samus smacked the giant in the head with the arm she had pulled loose and knocking its head back with another super missile, Arne fired off the blink pack and dove into the machine itself. He had to test the new weapon, surely Zurvduat would penalise him if he didn't. He had seen its now exposed internals and displaced himself into them, with his presence inside of them and the machine's vitae no longer powerful enough to repel him combining to tear the Syndran apart in a spectacular shower of colours and noise.

He shook his head and looked around, huffing a bit. "Wow, that was...definitely intense." He said, not tired at all; more coming off of the high of adrenaline and battle focus he had been in up to this point. He mimed wiping his brow and let out a little laugh to Samus' snort and giggle.

"I'd love to do that again sometime. Think we'll have more fights like that while we're here?" She asked, rolling her shoulders and flexing her arms slightly. She felt good, almost invincible really even if there had been some close calls.

"Based on the layout of the maze? Probably a lot actually, very strong likelihood of that even. Might even call it a guarantee." He said, taking a moment to sit down on a crate and looking towards Samus.

"We'll be fine, we can handle it. We're pretty great after all." She beamed with sunny confidence as she sat down across from him and folded her legs into a pretzel stance. "We probably should find Spire and Armaud, though...I wonder where they could be?" She pondered, humming a bit.

"Well, I'm hoping they heard all that fighting at least." Arne said, looking up at her and giving her a gentle smile beneath his helmet.

"Maybe...I don't think it'd be a good idea to stay here for too long though. Especially when we're being scored for time. Too bad, I'd like to explore this place more." She said, looking around at the architecture and then back at him.

"Well, in the future I think we'll get to explore as much as we want and whenever we want...when we're ready." He said, relaxing a bit at the thought.

"Yeah, it's just a shame we need to wait...haven't we just proved we could handle a big fight?" She said.

"I mean, yes." He said, not quite sure of what response to make.

"We should definitely work out why the animals are so aggressive though. I'm not comfortable letting that not be answered." She said, her words firmer now as she looked towards the nearest door, still blockaded by the barriers.

"Agreed, I just hope that our families approve. It'd be a pretty risky detour to take." He said, turning his head to see where she was looking at before realising she wasn't really looking at anything in particular and turning back to her.

"I'm sure they'll understand. They have to." She said firmly as she stood up and offered a hand to him.

"Come on, Arne. We've got an exam to pass." She said cheerily as he clapped his hand over hers and yanked himself up.

* * *

** Consolidated Logbook Entries **

Individuals: Organic: Active: Civilian: Scientists: Chozo: Female: Isa-Hesh

Isa-Hesh, often known as August Wings; is a senior member of the Zebesian science colony's research team and an honoured elder among the Chozo. At more than one hundred and forty thousand years old, Isa-Hesh is a long time friend and companion of Re-Sekh and has nurtured many children alongside him. A specialist in the fields of sorcery and biology and how they intertwine, Isa-Hesh's long life has been spent in pursuit of understanding the very nature of life. She educated several senior officials sent to the SR-388 mission but declined to join the expedition out of a preference to finish her work on the planet of Zebes. A proponent of adopting Samus Aran and ensuring that she was raised to acclimate with humans as well as Chozo traditions; Isa-Hesh also finds a great deal of enjoyment in looking after Samus' pets.

_Arne's Notes:_

She reminds me of Elmorni in all the best ways. And they get along really well too...Samus likes her a lot, and if she trusts her, then so do I.

_Samus' Notes:_

Mama's always been really great with Pyonchi and Okmin, and she's always had the best stories to share. I hope we always stay in touch, even when I'm all grown up.

Individuals: Organic: Active: Civilian: Scientists: Alimbic: Male: Mortirk

One of the four civilian Tetrarchs attached to Zurvduat's command aboard the Caesarian Lance, Mortirk is known for having a somewhat jovial attitude towards his work. A noted expert in negotiations and diplomacy with some one hundred thousand years of experience, Mortirk serves as a civilian leader for the crew of the Caesarian Lance and later the other scattered populations of stasis preserved Alimbics awakened by the crew of the vessel. Mortirk is a fierce advocate of diplomatic approaches to the new situation facing the Alimbics and sees in Arne a chance to better understand one of the more widespread species in the present era as well as a way to show the goodwill of the New Order. Mortirk takes an active involvement in the raising and nurturing of Arne, and has sought to prepare him for eventual reintegration into societies where he won't be the only human.

 _Arne's Notes_ :

Mortirk's a pretty nice dad, and he's been really helpful in getting better at talking to people. But I wish he could do more to help me get Zurvduat to acknowledge me as his son.

_Samus' Notes:_

He's better than Zurvduat at least, but he still makes me feel like he sees Arne as more a means to an end than anything else.

Planets: Styrmak Galaxy: Telemor Cluster: Theg System: Human Habitable: Precursor Gathering Place: Visited: Zoran

The Planet of Zoran is an artificial world of roughly 1.7 times Earth diameter with a mostly even partition between its many biomes and a temperate climate. Zoran was created 230,000 years before the present to serve as a place for social gathering and recreational activities. Assembled shortly after the design was finalised and the Theg system was produced, the planet would then have a long history of shifting purposes throughout its active service. It would become a manufacturing site, then a research and testing facility, then a military mustering point, then finally a training site before eventually rotating back to once again being a place primarily for gatherings. Many warrior lodges that found themselves with considerably less purpose following the end of the Wars of Despair would come to make residency on Zoran; testing themselves against its trials to while away the hours in times of peace. As the Order and Milieu descended into a state of rivalry and cold war, however, the frequency of visits to Zoran would gradually decrease. Following the sudden end of the Tetrarch Order, Zoran would slowly but surely come to be almost entirely unused. Secluded from most of the present societies of the Universe, Zoran presently receives an average of five visitors per Earth year.

_Arne's Notes:_

It's fascinating that there was a time when planets and megastructures could just be built on demand for singular purposes. It feels somewhat excessive, though, and I don't think a lot of thought was given to what would come after.

_Samus' Notes:_

I'm not so sure on whether building an entire ecosystem on a whim is something that we should encourage. It feels like it trivialises life itself, and if done, it would be better to make it from scratch than to take it from elsewhere.

Starvessels: Chozo Make: Gunships: Custom Design: Samus Aran Owned: Dormach

The Dormach was designed by Samus Aran and assembled in a process she directed as part of a test of her engineering skills after successfully creating her "Metkhesh" power suit with the aid of the Chozo and Mother Brain. The Dormach is designed for versatility, high-grade avionics and service as a long-distance base of operations and as such is made to be a multirole craft with an eye for making aggressive landings in particular. While well-armed and durable, its most critical feature is its ability to elude most forms of targeting with the aid of multiple stealth and countermeasure systems. Its manoeuvre systems allow for excellent atmospheric and vacuum mobility and its multitype array faster than light transit system allows for convenient intergalactic travel. A "Varkasar" type reactor provides power to all systems with reserve reactors ready to take over in case of failure, while the ship boasts all-purpose fabrication systems that allow Samus to live from it indefinitely. The Khazses class A.I fitted to the vessel serves as the overall control system and personality of the Dormach.

_Arne's Notes:_

It's a really sleek ship, it's a little weird to call it a gunship when its weapons are all hidden, but it's a dream to fly from the times I've gotten to handle the controls.

_Samus' Notes:_

I'm still super proud of designing it, and I really can't wait to make more! It's just really relaxing to get to sit down and put something like a whole ship together.

Starvessels: Alimbic Make: Strike Fighters: Custom Design: Arne Skjǫldr Owned: Sleipnir

With oversight and guidance from the Crew of the Caesarian Lance and the Palatine Mind A.I; the Sleipnir was made to suit Arne's simulation tested personal flying style at the end of his engineering exams. A long-range strike fighter capable of serving as a mobile home and making landings even in the roughest of conditions, the Sleipnir is a marvel of engineering. The Sleipnir is made to be incredibly fast and manoeuvrable while still being highly durable, destructive, intelligent, and provide a wide range of utility. However, there can be little doubt that its primary mission is to win engagements and serve as a strike platform before allowing Arne to arrive where he needs to go. Stealth, countermeasure as well as active and passive defence systems combine with its incredible agility and early warning systems to allow Arne to slip past nearly any defensive screen. Its multitype faster than light array draws on the Sol core systems in the strike-fighter and its auxiliary reactors to allow for quick and straightforward intergalactic travel. All-purpose internal fabrication systems allow for indefinite mission durations while mission control is facilitated by the "Volva" A.I programmed into the ship's software.

_Arne's Notes:_

It's honestly my baby. A place I built for me, made just the way I wanted it to be. Machines are always really comforting to work with, and nothing else in existence flies quite like it.

_Samus' Notes:_

It's more specialised than I'd like my first craft to be, but I don't think I've ever seen anything that can go as fast as it does. It was really nice of Arne to let me fly it a few times, it's got an incredible feel to it.

Starvessels: Diamont Make: Deep Attacker: Custom Design: Spire Adamant Owned: Cragimoch

The favourite of Spire's many personal craft and perhaps his most iconic vessel, the Cragimoch is a heavyset, incredibly durable ultralong range fighter-bomber that nevertheless has the performance to carry Spire through virtually any scenario. Originally constructed to serve Spire in his duties as a ranger, when Spire found himself to be the last of the Diamonts he had the ship heavily refitted and upgraded to the point of no longer resembling the original vessel. Raw firepower is the ultimate virtue of the Cragimoch, with a varied and incredibly powerful array of weapons that can allow the Cragimoch to bring the potency of a mass extinction event to bear on targets of Spire's choosing. Its targeting systems are intelligently guided by the Orok A.I fitted into the ship and can engage and track virtually unlimited numbers of targets which are kept in range by powerful thrust and manoeuvre systems fuelled by a "Stygos" multi-reactor system. Durability is also more than adequate thanks to multilayered active and passive defence systems and self-sustaining capabilities through self-repair and fabrication systems are similarly peerless compared to current generation craft of a similar size.

_Arne's Notes:_

It's unapologetically an attack craft for blowing up lots of big targets. The sheer firepower this thing has at its fingertips is almost kind of ridiculous. Seeing it do an all weapon strike is definitely something I'd recommend to most people. At least, not on the receiving end.

_Samus' Notes:_

It's not pretty, but I don't think there's anything else flying that can blow up as much stuff in one attack run as the Cragimoch. It's not really comfortable to be in, but I guess that's to be expected when it wasn't made for carbon-based passengers.

Starvessels: N'Kren Make: Fighter-Bomber: Custom Design: Armaud Svihaly Owned: Hreldim

Designed for and by Armaud Svihaly to service their role as the watcher of the N'Kren morphomundi, the Hreldim is the Freelancer's preferred craft. The Hreldim appears to be a unique vessel though due to Armaud's noted tendency towards secrecy, this cannot be confirmed for a fact. Endurance is the primary virtue of the Hreldim, with its shielding, armour and self-repair systems allowing for incredible passive defence while numerous more active systems further protect it from harm, with its hull able to repair the rare breaches made like quicksilver. Once through enemy defensive screens, the Hreldim makes use of a blistering array of weapons aided by surprisingly capable manoeuvre systems to ensure enemies are unable to escape. Thanks to the mechanical nature of Armaud, where the Freelancer begins, and the ship's Aggadi A.I ends is often difficult to discern, but by all accounts, their working relationship is impeccable. The vessels' sustaining capabilities and flux reactor systems allow for indefinite operations and the Hreldim's faster than light systems allow for Armaud to trivially traverse the breadth of known space.

_Arne's Notes:_

It's a flying tank, and it never tries to be anything else besides that. But it's definitely a magnificent flying tank at that. It really makes me wish that I could have seen the Pentarchy's strike forces when they were around. They must have been amazing to watch.

_Samus' Notes:_

Armaud is tough, and it seems like she wanted to make sure her ship was just as durable as she was. I really want a chance to fly it around myself, but Svihaly hasn't let me just yet. I know she will eventually though, it's just that I can't wait.

Species: Fauna: Archosauroid: Dinosauroid: Aviform: Raptoroid: Non-Sapient: Predatory: Frike: Zorani Frike

Originally native to the Chozo settled planet of Kazamind, Frikes were imported to Zoran and carefully modified to suit the artificial biosphere created for the planet to fill a predatory niche and for the aesthetic enjoyment of the Chozo populace. Once on Zoran, they spread across with little difficulty. Like all Frikes, Zorani Frikes are psionically adept and can generate their own shielding in tandem with specialised organs that allow them to resist greater punishment. The agile Aviforms are also highly accomplished fliers and are easily able to dodge around incoming fire provided they are aware of it. An arsenal of razor-sharp talons and a powerful beak is augmented by powerful wingbeats and the ability to release stored energy in a shockwave. However, a missed dive blast requires a moment to recover should it make contact with the ground, allowing for a swift counterattack.

_Arne's Notes:_

They're beautiful birds, but there's something terribly off with the Frikes here. None of the data about them suggests that they're particularly aggressive towards Sophonts under typical conditions. I'd need more data to make a sound conclusion, though.

_Samus' Notes:_

It's absolutely awful that we had to fight some of them to death. When I find out what's driving them to this sort of behaviour I'm going to make sure they're very sorry they ever decided to mess with the animals here. That's a promise.

Species: Fauna: Arachnoid: Pseudo-Aranean: Korantil: Ilangdar: Non-Sapient: Predatory: Regordim: Zorani Regordim

Originally native to the Legomach homeworld of Milgedar, Regordim are another import to the planet of Zoran to fill an ambush predator niche. Extremely variable in size from their hatching as larva little more than three centimetres in length to an adulthood size of three meters with no known upper limit; Regordim can occupy many niches at the same time at various stages of their life. With tissue with higher tensile strength than Graphene, claw tips on their tentacles able to rupture nanomaterial, and explosive reflexes, Regordim are well adapted to quickly overwhelming most prey. Regordim, however, are not well suited to long struggles or pursuit and will lose interest in prey that slips out of reach or causes substantial harm to the central body. If removed from their nesting places, Regordim will seek to return with all haste.

_Arne's Notes:_

I'm glad that we could end our first encounter with one without having to kill them. But if we're going to save the lives of the wildlife here, we need to handle the problem at its root.

_Samus' Notes:_

The life of a predatory animal is one that always involves death, but nearly always only out of perceived need. To make a predator risk its life for food it cannot eat is obscene, and it will not continue.

Species: Fauna: Hexapod: Mammalimimic: Skregan: Skelik: Non-Sapient: Detritovore: Skriltas: Zorani Skriltas

Opportunistic consumers of virtually all forms of dead or wasted organic matter, skriltas present little danger to more massive life forms and are almost entirely non-aggressive unless forced into conflict. Originally native to the Alimbic settled world of Quaros, populations of adapted Skriltas would be imported to Zoran to occupy a vital ecological niche. Skriltas do not require any unique tactics to deal with and are vulnerable to all weapons fire. They often carry many forms of diseases harmful to those lacking in access to medication due to their tendency to consume waste, however.

_Arne's Notes:_

It's rather odd that they don't seem to have anywhere near the kind of aggression a lot of the other animals here do. Must not be seen as viable by this...force.

_Samus' Notes:_

My armour tells me that I could effortlessly and safely handle them with my physique and immune system. That makes me happy to know..if only we had the time.

Mechanoids: Menkoram: Training: Combat Capable: Mekwasps

Relatively simple creations of the Menkoram, Mekwasps replicate much of the standard features of War Wasps seen throughout the universe. With sharp and powerful clawed limbs, strong mandibles, and a high-frequency barb that comes to a mono-atomic point even in their base form, they are well-armed. Further augmenting their arsenal is that their systems are modular and thus allow them to be configured to match many different types of war-wasps seen across the universe. Finally, Mekwasps are assembled from energy to matter conversion systems within manufacturing hives that allow them to be replaced with little cost or time. Relatively fragile, rapid-fire, high speed, and/or seeking projectile weapons are usually ideal in dealing with them. Their hives will typically require explosive weapons to eliminate.

_Arne's Notes:_

They're really just robotic war wasps? What else is there to say? They're not really that different on any of the planets they show up on. So I guess they're good for training against that.

_Samus' Notes:_

It's fascinating that there are so many kinds of war wasps that they felt the need to make mechanical simulations to offer specialised training against them. Just how did they get that widespread?

Mechanoids: Ylla: Testing: Combat Capable: Syndran

Syndrans were built to be means of providing hard but fair challenges to those who seek to claim treasures seen to be of significant value by the Ylla that are still meant to be attainable by the worthy. Using their ability to shift into zero-point energy or draw forth this energy to form into matter as well as transform their structures; they can tailor themselves to provide the ideal challenge. When faced with repetitions of tactics and capabilities, they will transform themselves to counter. They will similarly adjust their offensive capabilities to deal with unusual defensive strategies and abilities. Overly favouring a single tactic or weapon is thus not recommended. Maintaining a varied array of tactics and making full use of your arsenal will lead to the best results.

_Arne's Notes:_

The most concerning thing is that they're only classified as testing machines. If the gods are gracious, I won't have to face a proper Ylla war machine this big until I'm ready for it. Having to switch up tactics and weapons to deal with the adaptation abilities does work to keep me on my toes at least, but I feel like I'd have a way harder challenge if I didn't already have so many weapons.

_Samus' Notes:_

Now, this is more of a proper fight! I love having to think on my feet constantly, and its morphing abilities force me to do just that. I hope I can practice against more of them soon, this is the kind of fight I could see myself really getting to enjoy. I feel like I need to expand my melee arsenal though, something to keep in mind for the future.

Esoterical Concepts: Omnipresent: Quintessence

Quintessence is a force present in most things but is unique to every individual object and person. In essence, it serves as a sort of cosmic identification marker. Quintessence is challenging to detect and measure and is distinct from the soul, it is, however, possible to extract this force for usable energy. Typically when an object or individual is destroyed, some quintessence will be liberated in a generic state which many forms of precursor technology can harvest to affect repairs, restore ammunition, or recharge shielding. When combined with matter and energy transmutation systems, this will allow for exceptionally high battlefield self-sustainment capabilities.

_Arne's Notes:_

I wonder what my quintessence is like if everyone's is unique? Which set of my parents is mine more like? Or does species not really affect the shape and essence of quintessence?

_Samus' Notes:_

I don't see how someone can be aware of quintessence and not be at least somewhat spiritual. Especially when it surrounds us to such a degree.

Esoterical Concepts: Living: Vitae

Vitae is a force that is present only within animate beings and remains distinct from the soul and quintessence. Whether it is the origin force for life or is simply a force that is attracted to it remains unknown. Vitae weakens as the health and integrity of entities declines and strengthens if they improve. If deprived of vitae, in virtually all cases most beings simply die or otherwise cease functioning. Similarly, adding or transferring vitae offers improvements to health and function. Vitae also can serve to shield entities from many cataclysmic effects such as an unprotected teleportation overlap. However, direct interaction with vitae without magic is nearly impossible.

_Arne's Notes:_

It's really mind-boggling to me that we used to only list four fundamental forces of the universe. Just how did people study life without knowing forces like vitae, psionics, and quintessence? Vitae in particular just seems so...vital to understanding living things. It's going to be so strange to talk to people who don't know it even exists.

_Samus' Notes:_

I'm proud of myself for doing as well as I did on the exam on vitae theory. Which I suppose means I know more about it than nearly any other human in existence. That's a weird thought, isn't it? I'm hoping I don't let it get to my head. I don't want to become an arrogant person.

Upgrades: Mobility: Spatio-Temporal: Teleportation: Multiple Makers: Blink Pack

The Blink Pack is useful for allowing the user to teleport to any place they can perceive or have sufficient data about to enable them to transit safely. The device works through warping the fabric of spacetime to eliminate all distance between two points and circumventing most forms of obstacles, with the transition being instantaneous. Momentum will still be carried through when teleportation commences and is finished. If teleportation is made into a solid object or a dangerous environment; the user will be shunted to the nearest safe distance. However, if the target lacks sufficient Vitae, they will instead be destroyed by the teleportation, allowing the Blink Pack to be used offensively to finish off weakened opponents.

_Arne's Notes:_

Teleporters like this are especially useful for preventing enemies from locking me down in one position and escaping suppressing fire. The Blink Pack should also be particularly handy at letting me get into Shock Coil or melee range without exposing myself to fire.

_Samus' Notes:_

The ability to teleport to places I can perceive should be hugely useful for navigating certain obstacles. Especially if there's security camera feeds I can slice into. See-through shields, in particular, are easy enough to bypass with this upgrade.


	14. Forlorn: Descent (SA & AS)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Samus and Arne share a moment before proceeding with the next trial, but are faced with a mortal danger.

The descent to where they needed to go was straightforward after reopening the locked room with the blink packs now installed into the pair's suits. Doors and locks once cut off by transparent or translucent barriers were now easily bypassed, and they were able to make short work of most of the opposition that came their way. They cleared a few machines in their path, spraying well-aimed beam fire into the hopping, screeching things. The flea like Uth-Het were as big as wolves before being scattered into pieces by the blasts they received from the duo.  
  
A swing followed, a machine dropped to the ground in halves neatly separated by the arcing blade of Samus as she looked ahead, a hand from Arne stopping her from moving forward. Blue eyes stared out from behind her visor and fixated on the laser spokes of a series of rotating wheels ahead of the pair. There were about twenty, one after the other, each with eight beams that her suit helped her visualize; stretched through the tunnel that would lead them through to where they sought to go.  
  
"Wait. We need to time this just right." Arne said, pausing briefly as his keen senses worked out the pattern of the beams to the last decimal point. By the book, straight forward, but in Samus' eyes; there was a better way. Her cannon shifted into ice beam mode again and let out a few bursts of anti-energy. The lasers shorted out, frozen matter rapidly coating the emitters and locking the wheels in place to give them a wider opening.  
  
"Thought you were taking too long." She said with a smile beneath her helmet.  
  
"Well...I had this whole complicated timing sequence thought out in my head but that works too." He said with a small shrug.  
  
"I'm not trying to upstage you, Arne. Just needed to get it done a little faster, that's all." She said, patting him on the shoulder as he gently rolled his eyes beneath his helmet and snorted.  
  
"I don't mind at all." Arne said, giving her a thumbs up that she returned, followed by a fist bump. A gesture of camaraderie the two had picked up from their long hours spent together.  
  
"Anyway, we still need to get through the rest of this. Get your sub-weapons ready."  
  
"Already on it." He said.  
  
Arne let his cannon reconfigure itself into its own cryogenic weapon, arctic frost enveloping the emitters as the two charged down through the next door. In an eyeblink, they were through. The light tread of their boots on the hard surface came to a stop once they dodged around the incoming laser fire spat towards them. Streams of photons just barely missed them as they jumped to the side, and a clack and rumble of exploding missiles shut down the opposition immediately.  
  
On the other side was a room with four rectangular columns surrounding a cylinder with an entrance on the side facing them. The room stretched for about a hundred meters across and about as tall. Enough for them to bound in a single leap without any trouble.  
  
"Hope that wasn't everything." Samus said before she tilted her head to the left and ducked to the side to avoid incoming weapons fire. A rain of missiles exploded where the two of them were an eyeblink before. Yet they had already traversed dozens of meters away from the explosion point.  
  
"Really needed to ask, huh?" Arne said, threading the needle through dozens of homing projectiles with a series of twists of his body and microthrusts from his suit to avoid warheads that could have effortlessly tracked a rocket-powered hummingbird. Casual dodging for him, but he made sure to note the origin point of the incoming projectiles for his next action.  
  
"Well, it got us some action didn't it?" Samus said with almost palpable excitement within her voice. This sort of fighting; where she didn't have to worry about hurting someone _was fun_. She could feel so much exhilaration, like electricity flowing through her veins and raw energy dancing on her skin. She felt so much more than simply alive. She felt triumphant. She blinked straight through the next incoming thicket of warheads, leaving them to explode harmlessly where she had been as she got close enough to sever another turret with a swipe of her wristblade.  
  
The young woman found herself targeted once again, but was already ready for action. Pushing off with a simple kick, she swung out and cut through many of the incoming projectiles while she neatly grabbed one and tossed it into the mass of warheads to set it off early and clear out the opposition. Her cannon charged up and froze more incoming projectiles, giving Arne enough room to jump atop them and set up his next hat trick.  
  
Arne moved to the left with a usage of his blink pack. Space and time folded around him and shunted him to where he needed to be; out of the way of all incoming danger. He popped into existence to take Samus on her offer of a frozen missile platform as it fell. His boots landed atop the falling projectile, eyes taking sight of the origin of the missiles and letting the swarmfire turrets taste his shock coil for a few seconds to reduce it to so much vapour Hardly a scrip of energy-formed metal left.  
  
The lash of neutrinos would worm its way through other targets. One by one, he destroyed them, each target feeding energy back into Arne's suit as he absorbed their power through the shock coil connection. And soon enough, it was all over.  
  
The two breathed easier now, the challenge; such as it was passed. Easy enough, but there was the elation of triumph there all the same as they straightened themselves. Samus took a step with her blink pack to appear next to Arne and offered him her left hand, and the two clasped their fingers in a warm embrace and pulled each other into a one-handed hug.  
  
"You did great. I think we've got this in the bag." Arne said with a small laugh as the two broke apart, Samus rocking slightly on her heels as she turned towards the primary door out of the room.  
  
"Just wish Spire and Armaud were here to see this." Samus said slightly wistfully as she brushed a hand against the leaves of a nearby plant and looked to him.  
  
"I'm sure we'll find them. Just need to keep looking is all. I think we're on the right track aren't we?" He said, taking a moment to sit down on the ledge of the plant sill, resting his legs slightly and giving her a nod at the end of his sentence.  
  
"Well, obviously. They can handle themselves, but it's just a bit weird we haven't see them in so long. I had so many things I wanted to tell them, to show them!" She said, leaning her head near the petals of a flower as she stroked the plant.  
  
"It'd look nice on you. But uh, I don't think that's what you wanted to show them?" He said, a slight stutter at the start of his voice and a laugh coming from her shortly afterwards.  
  
"Maybe! But how long do you want to stick around here before we head out? We could probably use a break." She asked, humming a bit as she sat herself on her armoured knees with almost fluidic grace.  
  
"Five...ten minutes?" Arne said, exhaling as he flopped himself back onto the soil and looked up at the ceiling.  
  
"Fifteen." She said, tapping her helmet with her left hand and letting it dissolve into orange light, followed by her arm cannon as she took in a breath of air through her nose and sighed gently, looking down at him as he followed suit; letting some tension melt ever so slightly.  
  
"Yeah...fifteen sounds nice."

It took very little time at all for the two to start relaxing once they allowed themselves to do so. Samus sat herself down, legs straightened in front of her, and Arne sat himself in front of her, back facing her as she propped herself against a tree.  
  
Arne sighed and exhaled audibly as he lay down his head in her lap, lacing his fingers through the dirt and grabbing a handful, letting the particulates sift through his gauntleted fingers. It was still to some degree, slightly strange to sense the...lack of sensation of wearing something. The armour was so linked to him he may as well have been lying naked on the ground. He could in fact, feel in far finer detail than any normal human could with their bare hands, every microscopic stud and bump in the smallest of grains of dirt and silica. But the thought of not being able to feel in such detail gave him pause...most humans couldn't. Most aliens couldn't either. He was unique...almost.  
  
Samus had his head cradled in her lap, hands brushing in his hair as she looked down at him. The shielding of the power suit gave its metallic fingers a bit of extra warmth as she threaded her digits through his locks. She looked down at him, feeling his head against her legs as if the metal, shielding, plastoids, ceramics and composites guarding her body weren't there. She could sense his anxiety, and he could sense her insecurities. A two way connection of empathic signals that helped the two relax as they took comfort in the knowledge that the coiling serpent of doubt and stress were not unique to them.  
  
She felt at ease, perhaps this was a dangerous place. Perhaps it was compromised in ways that could threaten both their lives. But for now, she sensed no danger, no woe nor threat coming her way. None of the pinpricks and electricity of impending harm coming their way. No...she could relax and enjoy herself. For a moment, she didn't feel the world's weights on her pauldroned shoulders. She didn't feel the expectations of the duty she had set for herself, to be a light in a universe filled with darkness and terrors and to bring some brightness into the days of so many who fumbled in the shadows.  
  
And he...he wondered. What if every day could be like this? To just enjoy the passage of time in silence. They didn't need to say much of anything just yet, brushing his head into her hands slightly and managing a smile without his usual tired edge. He felt energized, at ease, and most of all; he felt like he could be just a bit softer than normal. A hand of his reached up and lay on her own and let his fingers rest atop hers as she brushed it against his cheek. His lips parted slightly as he caught sight of a widening grin forming on her face. His heart was beating...it wasn't often that he was cognizant of its rhythm, but now it was powerful in his chest. He wanted to stay in this moment...to feel safe for once, but he felt slightly colder when Samus' expression dimmed moderately.  
  
"You're thinking of running away aren't you?" Samus said.  
  
"I...I..." Arne stammered as he made a hard gulp.  
  
"I know...part of me wants to...but...would it be right?" He asked.  
  
"Do you want to?" She asked, returning to stroking him. She wanted the truth, but her voice carried no malice. Just concern. She...she didn't want to think either of them had the capacity for malice towards each other.  
  
"I...I do but..." He said, keeping quiet briefly before realizing he was clenching his other hand into a fist and relaxing. "But I don't think I should just...leave Sentus. Not when I'm not finished..." He said, trailing off and looking away from her briefly before she tilted his head back to him with a finger. She wasn't going to let him get away with so few words shared.  
  
"Well...it won't be much longer until we have to go out into the world ourselves. I'd like for you to at least visit sometimes." She said as he gave a soft smile in response and let himself relax just a bit.  
  
"Yeah...I'd like that a lot." He said with a grin.

"Well...I'm looking forward to seeing you more soon. You're...nice to look at." She said with a pink tinge to her cheeks. She could hit the wings off a fly from across the horizon without even looking at it, but right now words were...hard...slippery. The proper thing she wanted to say slipping from her grasp as she felt a sudden restraint. But she managed to wrap her spirit around those words and cast them out. "Handsome." A bit clumsy, a bit late, but he knew what she meant. That was their thing, the ability to just get across what they wanted to say even if at times their words failed them.  
  
"Well, it seems like the Gods put two people like that in this room." He said, tensing himself and pushing through the tightness in his throat as he felt so viscerally lame for saying that. Assuaging himself with his flashes of precognitive distant sight and his threads of telepathic ties to her that told him that she was someone he could say something like that to. Still, just putting the words out there made him feel vulnerable. His armour could shield his body, not so much his emotions. But he knew that this was one place; without the immediate presence of the alimbics; that he could open himself in such a way.  
  
And it was in this place that they drew together for a brief meeting of the lips. A kiss, soft, sweet, short. But warm and heartening all the same. They lingered a bit more, and their expressions were giddy and dumb. Schoolchildren who found something secret to do away from prying eyes. Something they enjoyed, in company they craved. Company that they hoped to indulge in much more in the near future, but the sense of obligation reared itself. A soft but incessant creature in the corner of the mind to warn them; there was still a task to be done.  
  
There was an ache to this realization, as inevitable as it was and as much as it lingered in their minds. But it was something that had to be minded.  
  
"Before we can go out and count all the stars, we should probably pass this exam...right Samus?" Arne said, still reluctant to let his head up. It hadn't been quite fifteen minutes, and he didn't want to bring all of his focus to the dreary work ahead all at once. But another ten minutes of just lying around and resting felt almost sinfully excessive. How much time was he wasting by just...idling when there was so much that needed doing?  
  
But Samus sensed this and rested her hands on his pauldrons and gently eased him back down. "We should...but we're not going to get the best performance by being bundles of nerves Arne. We have time. Just take it easy. Why are you in such a rush anyway? Afraid of something?" Samus asked, starting to slouch a bit in her posture to relax herself. She gave him a signal that she was about to incorporate her armour to get a better position, and that she would like him to do so as well.  
  
He nodded as yellow and blue light briefly filled the room, leaving her in her two-tone blue zero suit and himself in his grey and red. Largely skin tight with some added soft plating where absolutely needed, still shielded, and with the hoods of both still down to allow their faces exposure and for them to breathe the crisp and refreshing air of the facility without filtration. They both seemed a bit smaller without their armour, but the subtle differences in their physiques that their different transitions through the early stages of puberty were already starting to show. Both would be lean and agile as adults to be sure, but her femininity and his masculinity were starting to become more apparent over the passing months.  
  
Now with his head closer to her stomach as he pulled up a bit, he paused and gave her question thought as he rested a hand of his on one of her knees. "Well...I want to do the best I can. You know how I say like I feel that I can never make Zurvduat happy with me right? I think...maybe if I do really well, he'll send me off on a good note. And when I'm done with social experience he'll finally accept me as a Knight, maybe even a Paladin? Then we could really work together...like a dad and his son should." He said, gesturing a bit as she spoke, looking ahead as he straightened his legs, nuzzling a bit into her stroking his head.  
  
"I'm sure that if he's a good dad, you'll be able to impress him. We'll do this, don't worry. You've impressed me after all." She said with a smirk as she relished feeling a little closer to him.  
  
"You've got it good with Isa-Hesh and Re-Sekh...even if Grey Voice seems pretty distant. Not sure about Mother Brain though...she kind of spooks me honestly." He said, feeling rather like a dog or a cat being petted and not minding in the slightest.  
  
"Mother...Brain is...definitely someone I'm not going to miss when we go out. Everything is a debate with her, always having to fight with her and justify every single decision. It's so incredibly frustrating to get second-guessed constantly by a psychic computer." She sighed with visible tension before she found the simple pleasure of scratching behind Arne's ears and smirking when he mimed a purr before he managed his response.  
  
"I'm really not sure what even can be done with Mother Brain. She's...never really seemed to budge her opinions on anything. Kind of like Zurvduat then I guess, but just...really cold where he's often angry. I dunno, I don't interact with her enough to get a read on her...honestly I don't really even want to interact with her." He said, trying to get a little more serious after clearing his throat and turning his head up towards her as she played around with the little wings his white hair made towards the bottom of his neck.  
  
"Well, I don't blame you for that. I just wish she were less...her. Ugh..." She said with a pause before letting her attention latch onto something else. "Grey voice...he was a warrior not too long ago right? In Chozo years anyway." She said, attention briefly turning towards an Alcove as if she had seen something in the corner of her eyes, narrowing them with brief suspicion before focusing back on her partner.  
  
"Huh...yeah...I've seen his battle armour." Arne raised a brow as he turned his head towards her and tilted his head slightly to the left.  
  
"Do you think he did this test when he was our age?" She pondered, laying her chin atop his scalp and looking into his eyes; blues into reds.  
  
"Maybe not here but...probably something similar? Why?" He asked, turning away from her to look slightly to the left of where she did a few moments ago, clearly sensing something else too.  
  
"Because there's some things I'd like to ask him about this place. Some answers I'd like to get." She said as she turned her eyes from him towards another entrance. Something was not too far away, and it was bothering her.

"What do you think it is?" Arne asked. Part of him wished he didn't defer to her so much, but on the other hand not having to make and be second-guessed over every single decision was a nice change of pace. Still, his own mind was at work. Spire and Armaud would have already contacted them if it were them, which eliminated them as possibilities. The door was too small for the mysterious figure seen earlier...unless they could change size. Which was in the realm of possibility.  
  
And he could already sense she was on the same track he was. "Can't be Spire or Armaud, so that might make it our...mysterious visitor I guess? They haven't done anything yet though. And we're about as vulnerable as we can get without ditching our gear entirely." She said, tapping her chin slightly before looking at him as he sat up, letting her arms go around him.  
  
"I feel like we should go and check it out now." Arne said, already feeling that drilled in sense of restlessness oozing its way into him. He was a soldier, he had orders and when he didn't have orders he had the holy writ of the OODA loop. Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. He had observed that there was the presence of something throwing him off his ability to feel at ease. He had oriented himself to his surroundings and judged where they were likely to go. He had decided that they should move out, and he was just about to act until he felt Samus tugging him back slightly, not letting him stand up.  
  
"Arne. There's no imminent danger. I just want to be sure that we're actually facing something dangerous before go charging in guns blazing. That's all." She said as she let him stand up, letting her armour materialize once more, weapon included. Her armour welcomed her like an old friend, like a part of her returning to her body.  
  
The armour always felt safe. She felt strong in it. Her against the entire universe and she could win. But she had to caution herself. Arrogance was the downfall of many. Pride was something she couldn't protect herself against with physical armour and superhuman flesh. But she tempered that into confidence. She could do this, she would do this.  
  
Arne though, the armour usually meant work. It was a uniform of duty and something to be donned when there was a task to be done. The armour was a symbol of a knight's duty and an embodiment of his commitment to seeing it done. But the weight of that duty sometimes felt like a drag on his soul. But whether or not he could do this was irrelevant, he had to do this.  
  
The two approached, and the sensation of another presence intensified, but there were no visions of incoming threat. There was something coming but...it was just an animal, a hrundin. Whining as it sought a way to get down from where it was on its high perch but afraid of the drop downwards. Energy readings indicated it had nanite projected shielding, indicating it had an owner looking out for its safety, but it seemed unwilling to trust the technology to save it from the fall.  
  
Black furred, dog-like, four-limbed, maybe one hundred and twenty-five kilograms in total, bushy tail wagging, eyes wide and snout repeatedly raising upwards to let out a howl, clearly lost, pacing frantically and pawing at the ground to get the two armoured youths' attentions. This one was clearly domesticated, and also frantically looking around for something.  
  
The two approached, and the animal seemed to almost light up as it woofed several times in excitement. The bear and dog-like animal seemed elated to see things it recognized as being humanlike, and eagerly ran towards them with playfully lowered it...herself; as Arne made quick note of, before the two of them.  
  
"...Aww..." Arne said as the bear snouted animal approached, whinging and rolling onto her belly which was immediately given a few quick rubs by the eager kids. If there was one thing that united the two without the slightest disagreement, it was a fondness for animals. He kept Hugin and Munin, she kept Pyonchi; and that wasn't even getting into their mechanical pets. He couldn't really help himself but feel sympathy for it, and it was only on rare occasions that he was able to let down his guard and admit his fondness for the warm and cute.  
  
"How did a hrundin get here?" Samus asked after giving a few nonsensical babytalk words of affection to the hrundin. Curiosity was ingrained in her soul. The quest for answers drove her as much as the quest for justice. This hrundin had an owner, she had a history, someone loved her enough to bring her here. But that someone couldn't have been any of the Chozo or Alimbics she knew, nor could it have been either Spire or Armaud. So who brought this poor thing here? And more importantly, why did they lose it?  
  
But the Hrundin's head, after bumping her snout playfully against their helmets, then turned towards a door that she seemed to want them to go to. The two gave each other a look that said more than most conversations and then nodded. They'd go through the door and see what was on the other side post-haste.  
  
Maybe there they'd get some answers.

But the next room offered only further questions. As it opened into a hallway with a heightened path to either side of the lower centre that created a valley, they could see that there was an alcove in the room where there was a body. Still. Cold. Whomever it was; they were dead for at least two days. But the Hrundin seemed fed and watered, likely from the machinery sensing her need nearby. But then, would they have not sensed the injuries of this person? The wound dealt to them was not from security weapons nor of any of the wildlife here.  
  
They took another, closer look at the corpse. They were non-human to be sure, shaggy fur exposed through the hole in their suit from the deathblow. The snouted helmet and the analysis of their DNA indicated that they were a member of the Zardim species, and the custom paint job on their armour suggested they were some kind of explorer or adventurer.  
  
Furthermore, the person here was wearing armour of make by the Elmdir Corporation within Federation space. But how did they get here? The Federation didn't even know this planet existed. Yet here they were. Dead as a doornail with few clues as to how they got there. But their armour; while damaged, still had functioning components. The distributed nature of its computers meant that its memory was intact.  
  
Samus squatted down while Arne knelt, and the two gave each other a nod before scanning. The sight of a dead body put them at unease and made them shudder a bit. This was the first time they saw the corpse of another sapient being in...they pulled themselves back to the present. But the sight of someone just lying in repose was kind of upsetting. Shocking in a way. Someone who had once been alive and had a story to tell was now silenced, and Arne, in particular, wanted to know what song he sang before his cord was cut while Samus was more interested in who would have to be delivered the news of his passing.  
  
DATALOG: Vurdon Olmrg, Adventurer and Fact Finder: Amazing Discovery!  
  
"Portal seemed to lead me to the motherlode here. This technology is incredible. I've never seen so much still functional precursor tech in one place. I'll have a look around, the way back seems to be functioning as it should be and based on my estimates it shouldn't take more than a day for help to arrive if I get stuck here should I use the comm systems here. Which is plenty of time for me to get cracking and see what I can't use to make a name for myself. With any luck, my days as just being a Cybervid personality will be over. I'll be the guy everyone talks to to get the scoop on the ancients. And I'll be able to have it made for the next oh I dunno; million years?  
  
Mendelle seems to be holding up pretty good too. The security here doesn't seem to bother us even with the really nasty stuff as if we're not really worthy of their attention. Which suits me just fine, I'm not looking to get into a fight with Chozo security bots or Alimbic war-mechs. Yehrend knows how much I'd hate to die in a place like this. But I mean, I should be fine right? The save station seemed to accept me so I should be able to be mediported to it and recuperated if anything goes wrong. But there's something weird here too. Some strange horned thing I keep on seeing at my peripheries. It doesn't look like any of the known progenitor civilizations either, which freaks me out."  
  
"You know of Vurdon?" Arne asked before getting a shake of the head from Samus.  
  
"There's way too many shows being streamed for me to keep up with. A quick datanet search tells me he mostly does things to get kids interested in exploring for his livelihood. Well...did. Gods...poor guy, his family's heart's going to break when they find out." She said, laying a hand on his faceplate and letting out an exhalation as she closed her eyes and whispered a prayer hoping for his safe and comfortable passage into his next life, one that Arne quickly made his own version of according to his own faith as he laid Vurdon's hands over the hole in his chest.  
  
There was a pause of about an hour before the next log in the timestamps they could find in the suit. This one considerably more worried in tone and demeanour.  
  
"I've seen that thing again. Weirdest thing though is how the security doesn't seem to like it being here. It's fighting with it half the time and it's more than holding its own. And honestly if it can take on the security here in a fight and come out on top I'm not at all down for having a go myself. What is it? What does it want? And why does my scanner give me a load out of gibberish when I try and get a read on the damn thing? I know a lot of this stuff is way beyond my tech's ability to decipher but the A.I in my suit should be able to give me at least some basic run down. Maybe I'll try and find a way to observe it without being seen."  
  
"So that horned thing is what's been destroying some of the security systems before we got here?" Arne said. "Right...which means that the security must consider it something to attack on sight. Which means...nothing good that's for sure." Arne said, rubbing at the chin of his helmet while Mendelle pawed at her master and howled, lying down and trying to lick his helmet as if that would wake him up. But no response...Arne patted them on the head as Samus gently eased her away from the corpse and whispered her condolences as Mendelle whined.  
  
"One more log." Samus said, flicking to the last as it fed into her nervous system.  
  
"It's coming for me, it sees me and its editing my scan system whenever I try to get a read on it. It wants me dead, it told me it wants me dead and I can see it everywhere I turn. The howling hunt is coming for me and everywhere I turn it's there. I need to get out, can I get out. No, no I can't get out. It's blocking the exits. I can't get out, oh gods please someone take care of Mendelle. This was all a huge mistake...no...no. It's not possible, mediport signal severed...no...No. No!" A simple note was at the end of the last log, "User life signs terminated, mediportation failed, recording medical data for review. No medical authorities in range. Awaiting extraction."

The alarm and fright in the last logs gave the pair a bit of a shake. Vurdon had been murdered in a way that prevented his mediportation systems from working despite the fatal injury by some strange energy weapon. One that had not merely cut cleanly through his body ate it from the inside out with unnatural fire. His skin was left, but it was hollow save for dust and what unsinged blood that was slowly leaking from the hole that proved to be the fatal blow. It was in all likelihood a horrid way to die, and the fact that someone could die in such a way here spoke to something urgent.  
  
"...Where's Spire and Armaud?" Samus said, her voice now filling with genuine concern. They could be in actual danger here. And if such two seasoned freelancers; virtual gods in a community of star wheeling superheroes; could be in danger, so too could two children doing a minimally supervised mission for the first time.  
  
"I don't know...but I think we could try and track them. We just need to get to a map station; then we could ask it to follow their signals." Arne offered, trying his best to keep his cool in the situation as he felt a thread of worry start to spool around his heart and squeeze ever so slightly. He was concerned. For himself, for Spire and Armaud, but also for Mendelle and of course, for her.  
  
Samus sensed that worry and reassured him with a pat on the back. Everything was going to be okay.  
  
She had doubts herself, worries that she might not be strong enough to keep everyone safe. Worries that some people, despite her best efforts, might still die. He latched onto those and took her hand off of his back. Now, he threaded his fingers through hers to interlock their hands together.  
  
They could fight their worries together.  
  
"We should probably get Mendelle out of here, keeping her safe is going to make our objective a lot harder to do. So first thing's first." Arne said as he bashfully pulled his hand out of hers and tried his best to hide the fact that he was blushing beneath his helmet.  
  
"Agreed, I'll take point, you keep her out of trouble. You've got the shield regeneration with the shock coil so you can take hits for her as needed. Don't let me out of your sight. Remember, no getting separated." She said as he gave a nod of understanding.  
  
"Right, there's also some kind of energy signal close to the nearest map station. Consistent with highly concentrated shielding." He said as he took a look at his suit's long-range scan data, showing him a room close to where his armour calculated the map room was.  
  
"But first we should really get her to a teleport room to the hangar as soon as we can locate one. Then we'll check out the signal. That seems alright with you?" Arne said, finishing up as the helmet cut off its map data at his request while his hand idly stroked the rather large mammalian's head and scratched behind her ears.  
  
"Sounds like a plan." She said with a thumbs up and a nod.  
  
"Should we be worried about her going berserk like most of the animals here? I can't sense anything going wrong with her in the near future...but..." Arne started before Samus shook her head at him.  
  
"She'll be fine, we'll keep her safe." Samus said with the utmost confidence.  
  
"Alright, if you say so." Arne said, exhaling as if to expel his doubts and concerns with his breath. Arne easily scooped up Mendelle and slung her over his shoulder as if she weighed less than a balloon to the mammalian's surprise as Samus took a quick scan around the room before she fixated her gaze on a door to their left. She had a good feeling about that one, and hers was the sort of gut that it was rarely wise not to trust, especially when augmented by her precognition.  
  
"That way." She said, extending her index finger in the direction of the door as the pair made a few quick jumps to cross the distance without overly stressing out Mendelle. Once on the other side, the pair let her down and allowed her to follow their quick jog. Now on the platform that they needed to be, Samus shot the door and stepped in to look from one side to the next.

The room, of course, produced its obstacles. Mechanical shriek bats descended from hatches in the ceiling of the hallway and flung themselves at Samus, who quickly cut them down to size with bursts from her Volt Driver sub-weapon. Electric yellow globules of energy vaporized the little robots with each blast, Arne following behind dutifully once she gave the all-clear signal, using the blink pack to move back towards him as he escorted the pet animal down the hallway.  
  
So far, most of the scan logs had been of things mostly relating to the prior functions of this place, but as the two raced through the halls they stopped briefly when their scan visors picked up information of interest. Information quickly filed away into their memories once they had deciphered the encryption.  
  
"Samus, check this out." He said as he took a look at the heading the armour assigned the data. Data that it managed to extract from a terminal to the side of the door once they cleared out a trio of attack drones, Samus cutting one in twain, a second being shot to pieces by a missile, and a third being vaporized by Arne's shock coil.  
  
"Security Logs: Potential Concerns: Current.  
  
Within the past 0.5 centicycles a persistent intrusion has continued to pose problematic issues for the maintenance of the training facility. All attempts at halting the progress of the intruder remain unsuccessful, all records of any comparable energy signatures to the intruder are unavailable to our mainframes. Attempts to lock their movements down to allow for the deployment of sufficient assets to stop their progress remain unsuccessful. Furthermore, their presence correlates to the sudden aggression of most undomesticated fauna on the planet. Whether they are the causation or this is simply a coincidence is not information available to this mainframe. The chances of this intrusion interfering in the Hatchling and Neophyte's trial of form is also quite significant.  
  
Attempts to render their signal traceable are ongoing. A listing of all prior detections by monitoring forces has been compiled, but to ensure that this listing is not compromised; is to be restricted to map stations. This mainframe hopes that the Hatchling and Neophyte can find this information and make use of it to ensure a successful trial and their safety against the intruder."  
  
Samus smiled at that. So someone was looking out for them after all.  
  
The next few rooms were unremarkable, though one particularly ornery bull-like Kurdilm had to be frozen over by the pair. The horned, elephantine animal rose from its watery home as Arne carried Mendelle with him and vaulted across the waterfall, and made an impressive leap with sturdy pillar-like legs to try and get them in charging distance. But Samus was in no mood to have to put down the twenty-tonne beast and quickly neutralized it with a volley of charged ice beam shots. It wouldn't hold forever, but it gave them enough time to get going, and for Samus to reflect a bit more on the state of animal life in the facility.  
  
Why were domesticated animals unaffected? Why target wild animals at all? Some means to strike against the Chozo commitment to ensuring the health and welfare of all living things? A mockery of their dedication to the preservation of nature? An insult to their dream of harmony between civilization builders and the natural world?  
  
They wouldn't have long to go before reaching the map station, however, clearing out a dozen humanoid combat drones with almost casual ease. The map station door opened up for the two of them, and they soon had the data they were seeking. A teleport station was just two rooms over to their relief, just waiting for them to enter quickly.  
  
Arne scanned over the rest of the map and found that the route to the strange signal was also close. A straight shot down. Pretty convenient really but...was it too convenient he thought?  
  
"This rescue op seems almost routine...just a simple extraction of a survivor. Think it could be part of the training simulation?" Arne asked, wanting to voice his opinion out loud.  
  
Samus shot him a rather evil glare and frowned beneath her helmet. "Arne, they wouldn't put a Hrundin in danger just to test us." She said with a huff, offended really. Immediately Arne looked sheepish and muttered an apology.  
  
"It's just...we just found her and we've already found a way to get her out of danger just like that." He said, resting his free hand on the back of his neck and shaking his head. "Maybe it's just because I'm expecting the worst. It's something Zurvduat would do, I'm sure." He said, sighing and shaking his head.  
  
"Well, lucky for us, he's not in charge of the simulation is he? Besides, you saw the logs. That was someone real, and we can save a real life by getting her out of here too!" She said, patting him on the shoulder. "Don't be so suspicious of everything. Not everything's out to get you." She said with a gentle voice to reassure him.  
  
"Well...yeah you've got a point, it's pretty lucky that it's going to be this easy huh?" He said.  
  
"Oh spirits I was worried we were going to have to trek all the way to get her out of here. It's incredibly relieving to just get her in the hangar nice and cosy." She said with a small laugh and a shake of her head.  
  
"That's well...yeah nice that we don't have to do that. I think I can take that." He said as he checked the rest of the map data. It seemed that there were many different pathways into the room that contained the odd barrier signature that had popped up on his scanners earlier.  
  
However, based on the arrangement of the room he figured that there was some powerful foe associated with the barrier signature. Tapping his finger against his chin, he looked towards Samus as she petted the Hrundin eagerly.  
  
"So we'll just send Mendelle on her way and check in on the trial at the energy signature right?" Arne said, getting a thumbs up from Samus in response.  
  
"Sounds like a plan." She said eagerly.

After a scant few seconds, they had reached their destination. There was a sense of unease with the prospect of going yet further down. There was a weight to their steps, but they went on anyway with purpose. Arne once again carried the Hrundin as they quickly shot their way through a few scattered drones and a predator who had to be frozen over by the pair, but her weight was of no concern to the two of them.  
  
The last door was just ahead, and the teleportation room seemed open. So it appeared that the animal's stay with the pair was at an end. But still, Arne couldn't help but feel that something was off. Samus also felt that tinge of unease in her gut. It did feel too simple. Old Bird would have used some machine, and certainly never have killed someone to try and see how they'd respond to a detour like this, but every scan indicated Mendelle was organic. But Zurvduat...the Curiasseur and General was something very different indeed, as was Mother Brain.  
  
But her doubt was like a candle flame to Arne's solar flare. Years of trying to anticipate what would please Zurvduat had left him continually expecting more mind games, more tricks, more need to second-guess and doubt himself.  
  
"What if it's all just one of his tests..." Arne said as he looked at Mendelle and only wished he felt safe enough to dismiss his armour and give her the hug she really needed without hard armour in the way. The pat he gave almost seeming to try and confirm she was even real to him rather than an illusion. He wanted to help, but what if helping her wasn't what Zurvduat wanted?  
  
That thought almost paralysed him and made him stop his petting of Mendelle practically instantly. What if Zurvduat was trying to see if he'd waste his time on an unimportant objective? Was he trying to trick him? Was...was this right to do?  
  
"Maybe it's some sort of nanite replicant..." He murmured to himself; such would be well in the technological abilities of the Alimbics. To create faux-life that could come off as organic to anything but specialist scanning equipment. It was possible. It could be...  
  
Samus heard him despite him whispering as quietly as grass rustling from an insect. And immediately tempered outrage flared as she harrumphed at him and firmly grabbed his shoulder to spin him towards her. She then forced to look her in the eye as she dematerialised her helmet to let him know that hers was not a happy expression.  
  
"ARNE!" She shouted, snapping him out of his loop of self-questioning. "Helmet off, now. We need to talk." She said as Mendelle sat down and panted, tilting her head in confusion.  
  
He at first felt like resisting, but shook his head and complied, blue light enveloping and then vanishing the coverings around his face. She made him look her straight in the eyes as she squinted at him.  
  
"What's bothering you? Please, tell me instead of hiding it. Why are you so afraid of the Hrundin?!" She said, clearly still on edge. Anger was her constant companion and her greatest demon. She wasn't angry at him, not entirely, but she was furious that his mind was set on this course of doubt. By a certain someone, she was finding herself increasingly hoping she could pry away from him and indeed; out of her life entirely.  
  
"I'm just...stuck wondering about whether this is all just one of Zurvduat's games is all. If not him, maybe Mother Brain or someone else." He said with a sigh, squeezing the words out with all the tension and effort of sawing a butterknife through a steel brick.  
  
"Arne. Look at me. You want to help people, right? Like we said we would." She said, trying to put on a more gentle expression now.  
  
"...Yes."  
  
"If Zurvduat is going to give you worse marks for helping someone in need, then forget him. If that's what he wants out of you, then his opinion is stupid, and you should ignore it!" She said with a huff of outrage. But beneath that outrage was something much more primordial: concern, worry, and a longing to help.  
  
She cared. And that made it impossible for her to let this go. Let Zurvduat call her compassion weakness she thought, let Mother Brain scorn her for having a heart. She knew what was right, and that included helping those in need.  
  
Arne thought about it. He thought of Elmorni and Zurvduat's disagreements, how he couldn't decide on whose approval he sought whenever he had to choose between one or the other. He thought about the words of Elmorni and...  
  
"What would your birth parents want you to do?" She said, voicing something at the back of his mind. The words in the memoirs of his birth parents rang more clearly in his head, their politics, thoughts, attitudes. And he always recalled how they emphasised that nobody lives in a vacuum and that direct, thoughtful action was often what was needed to make things better. If he allowed himself to submit to the endless mind games of Zurvduat and leave this animal be in this strange place, what would his original family think of that?  
  
"You're...you're right. It doesn't matter if she's real or not; she needs help." He said. Better to be tricked into helping out ten people who aren't in need than to fail to help out one who genuinely does require assistance.  
  
A smile formed on his lips as he looked at her, and she returned it in kind. "Let's get going then. We can still make up for the lost time." She said, gesturing Mendelle towards the teleportation station, the circular platform whirring as it built up energy. Mechanisms flared open to allow the Hrundin in as they beckoned her onto the machine and stepped aboard.  
  
With a gentle request, Arne got Mendelle to sit herself down, and the trio willed themselves to the teleporter closest to the hangar, exiting not too far away from their ships with a flash of orange light. Instantly recovering their bearings, Samus and Arme held onto the large; red panda like animal and focused their blink packs on teleporting once again on top of Samus' gunship. And in a moment, they lowered themselves into the confines of the ship.  
  
The interior was cosy and perhaps on the small side for an animal Mendelle's size, but it would fit her well enough, and the A.I would be able to take care of her needs. Arne quickly gave a scan of the interior and saw that she'd added some actual paper books to a few shelves on the left. It struck him as a bit odd to use such archaic relics as physical books. Still, they looked lovely on her shelves, and he briefly lost himself in wondering whether he should consider doing so himself before snapping back to attention when he found Mendelle licking his face.  
  
"H-hey! Stop it that tickles." He giggled as she bumped his nose into him. That got Samus to laugh too, and he felt relieved to be in a position to; however, briefly; relax for a bit. Tension melted and a weight seemed to disappear from his shoulders, however momentarily.  
  
"Looks like you've made a friend!" She said with a chuckle before the hrundin went back to the ground on all fours.  
  
"Make sure she's taken care of while we're gone alright?" She said as Mendelle immediately started to sniff around.  
  
"We should get going, it shouldn't take too long to arrive based on my estimates," Arne said, wiping some of the slobber off his face and smirking at Samus as the two's helms rematerialised over their heads. He felt clearer now, convinced of himself and his purpose. The doubt lifted from him like a dissipating fog, and what came next seemed easy to him.  
  
"Agreed." She said, leaping out the open top hatch of her ship as if to race him there, with the young lad in hot pursuit. Down they went into the teleporter, and down they went to the pit of the room that had the barrier signature emanating from it. She too felt more ready now than before. Whatever was in that room would have to face them clear of worry as they soldiered towards it; gunning through obstacles with practised precision.

It took remarkably little time for the two youths to tread the path not taken. Their boots hit the ground as they descended deeper towards the pit, one more level down and another handful of obstacles cleared out with practised precision. Such minor engagements went on virtually autopilot mode for them, hardly worth even thinking about as they approached the last destination.  
  
Finally, the door they were waiting for lay ahead. Samus and Arne made short work of the green super missile shield over the circular door with a single warhead from Samus, and beneath them was a drop into an arena. Arne stopped to look down, urging her to wait for a second as he looked around.  
  
"See something?" Samus said, taking a second to look along with him. Out there was a vast arena, multiple elevated platforms and fields of cover. At the centre was a pair of orange tokens, one held by a Chozo Statue, the other by an Alimbic reliquary that his scanner read simply as some form of armour upgrade. Something to offer their armour the ability to shrug off extreme temperatures without shield drain while substantially augmenting resilience and physique across the board.  
  
The varia suit if he had to hazard a guess. An upgrade to Samus' Mekthesh armour and his Scorimak battlesuit. But there was something else, above perhaps?  
  
Samus pointed it out to him, a machine at the top built in the vague shape of a mighty bird of prey. They could see that it was hanging upside down from the ceiling in front of the ceiling with its wings of metallic feathers folded around it like a cloak. Taloned legs, spindly for something the size of a sauropod, clutched at the ceiling to keep it rooted firmly in place. An owl-like head with a cluster of large optics was buried somewhat into its wings, and a fan-like tail split into many blade-like projections. It was gold, red and orange in colouration, and it was obviously waiting for them to enter its zone of battle for them to prove themselves.  
  
The two nodded and used the blink pack to drop down and get themselves into flanking positions around the mechanoid as it hummed into life. Green highlights and optics flared into being with a fierce brilliance and its claws unhooked from its perch to let it fall towards the ground. Its wings spread wide, and with impossible grace, it righted itself and flapped them gently to begin hovering.  
  
Samus' scan visor recognized it as a Werizo; an airborne form of Chozo sentinel made to test young warriors in battle and see if they were worthy of the prizes they guarded. This one made use of the systems of the barrier suit to defend itself, and the scans of the room indicated that there were systems in place to rapidly alter the temperature of specific areas. How very ironic that the guardian of the barrier suit's arena would be far simpler to clear with the help of the barrier suit. The weapons included energy projectors in the wings, head, multiweapons in the back, shockwave and power field emitters on the talons and feathers, an energy peck and bomb systems in the tail. The chest would be its most vulnerable point, more specifically where its abdomen connected into its thorax. A somewhat easily guarded weakness, but exploitable all the same, she mused as she grinned.  
  
"+You ready Arne?+" Samus said as the machine swivelled a boulder-sized head to examine the two of them. She felt that electric tingle of excitement in her body once again. She felt honoured to be entrusted with fighting one of these mighty machines, even if it was almost certainly not allowed to fight with more than a fraction of its full capabilities.  
  
"+One of us should try to get its attention. I'll get in its face and try to give you clear shots to its weak point. Then we'll swap positions when it starts to figure out what we're doing.+" Arne said, his nervousness and lack of confidence washed away by the calming certainty of what he had to do in a fight. He steeled himself and let his training kick in, the endless drills starting to put him on autopilot as he decided to take the first move and seize the initiative.  
  
The positron beam erupted from his cannon, sending out an electric lash of anti-matter that exploded in a massive burst of electrical energy upon the rupturing of the fields that kept the arcing stream from touching the air. Power enough to crack a dozen mountains in half vented itself against the shielding of the target. As devastating in its own way as the ice beam's ability to end a fight almost instantly and devastate most forms of shielding. But despite a barrage of positronic shots, the machine remained, the vitae tracker in their suits registering a still mostly full bar.  
  
This would be a proper fight, Samus thought as she dove to the side to get a clear shot. Her cannon clicked into the Ice Beam configuration and released keening globules of raw anti-energy that vented themselves against the shielding in cascading multicoloured aurora-like bursts. But she felt the impending retaliation on the causeways of destiny, a sense of dread crawling up her spine and sending its signals through her limbs as she saw where the incoming return strike would come.  
  
Arne entered his Psychosphere form and boosted out of the way, she backflipped fast enough to outrace her own sound. Both managed to evade the incoming pyrosphere launched from the head of the machine and then vaulted once again over its incoming shockwave stomp as it descended from the skies with the fury of a meteorite and sent forth a shivering ring of energy with sine-like electric arcs of orange energy.  
  
The erupting sphere of energy engulfed itself in thermonuclear reactions that tripled its radius before a barrier contained and shaped it, both to limit the area of effect and ensure the raw energy of the explosion was not wasted on targets it did not need to hit.  
  
Arne shot up a half-pipe and fired off his grapple beam to swing across the machine to land on a platform as he calmed himself and prepared for his next shot; seeing the machine approaching him at high speeds just as he switched over to his shock coil.

Arne's shock coil was a versatile if short ranged tool. Few of his weapons could exceed it in raw destructive output per second if he could get close and maintain his distance. It was next to impossible to evade once he had it locked on, and furthermore: it was his favourite colour. The blue-white stream of electricity and neutrinos zipped out to strike the target with the characteristic buzzing howl of the weapon and the damage he took from being caught in the storm of energy shards the Werizo made by swiping its wings was quickly restored; recharging his shield to full in just a blink of his eyes.  
  
But it couldn't be his only tool. Not when the enemy was keen on rushing him head-on. Not when he was being clipped by a thermal blast that knocked him to the side and made him stumble, not when he could see energy flare up around the Werizo's beak intent on running him through. Winged by it as he moved to dodge the beak only to be swept by the wing and pushed into the wall with seismic furor; he took only the briefest moment to recover his senses after letting out a groan of discomfort.  
  
"Hold on Arne! I'm coming!" Samus shouted across the room in alarm at seeing Arne grunt from clear effort to avoid getting squashed into the indentation he had been forced into by the Machine's sheer strength. She was worried about him. Always was since the day they had met, always will be he figured as he worked out on a plan to get free.  
  
He was being pushed into the wall and his shielding meter ticked downwards as he felt incredible force being exerted on him. He wouldn't give up however, and started to strain back against his would be captor. The metal behind him gave way as he widened the indentation he had made to get more leverage until he could get his cannon facing the right way, his red eyes spotting Samus approaching just as the Werizo was preparing to rear its head back to smash its beak into his suit.  
  
Sensing the right moment, he fired off the Shock Coil again as Samus latched onto it with her grapple beam and yanked the sauropod sized machine backwards. He sighed with relief as he recovered some of his lost energy tanks, seeing the meter tick back up to full while Samus gave the machine a super missile to the face to stun it; followed by her rolling into the morph ball to cling onto it with the spider function, peppering it with explosions while Arne was busy getting his Volt Driver ready; terawatt burst after burst striking the machine as it flailed to get up until it finally caught Samus with its wing feathers and tossed her clean across the room to get space.  
  
An outraged shout came from Arne as he felt that same flash of concern she did for him not more than a hot second ago. He choked down his distress at the thought of seeing her hurt. Zurvduat had chastised the two of them for their emotional attachment to each other, warning that one day it would cause them a great deal of pain. He had to do something about it, not just rush in without a plan. But he didn't need long to think of one as soon as he saw Samus stand up.  
  
Deciding against pulling away, Arne met his enemy with the power blade; coursing electricity through it to jolt its shielding multiple times. He got in a dozen strikes as it tried to catch him, dancing around its movements until it tried to stomp on him. Now his bladework moved to block its attempts at raking its talons across him. With a shift in his feet he strained slightly and pulled the enemy into the path of Samus who gladly took the chance to release a three-shot barrage of super missiles. One, two, three earth-shaking missiles into the foe and he felt the pressure relieve from his arm as he ceased wrestling with the foe.  
  
Releasing a charged missile and boosting back before the Werizo could get its bearings, he flashed a signal to Samus for them to switch; letting her rush up and tackle them with a furious speed booster charge and shinespark. The impact of which was enough to cause a spectacular shockwave and make the ground tremble before she unleashed a fully charged ice beam shot following a quick kicking motion off of its body to keep it further off balance, sweeping her cannon upwards as she spun around to strike it on the beak before flipping backwards.  
  
The enemy was rattled, but not yet beaten even as Arne quickly unloaded a cascade of missiles into the foe; the revolving mechanisms in his arm cannon quickly cycling through warheads to torch his way through the foe's shielding. Already it was gathering its wings together to cover its chest; slamming into the earth with a downward thrust and forcing the pair to evade in separate directions.  
  
The Werizo was fast and recognized that it was being pinned down by the superior numbers of the duo and refused to allow such a thing to continue. Deeming Samus the greater priority, the machine flapped its wings to take flight and began to heat up he area that she was in, commanding the temperature of that section of the room to rise to degrees where the air molecules broke down into a soup of plasma that rapidly drained at her shielding. Then it sought to press its advantage by swooping towards her, talons outstretched.  
  
Pulled out of the heated area by Arne's grapple beam, she tried her best to focus for a moment to recover shielding before a series of bombs erupted around her. She tried to thread through the avalanche of explosives, but follow up missile strikes to try and overwhelm her danger sense already starting to be busied with some other, more distant concern gnawing at her extrasensory perception.  
  
Bouncing off of a wall, Samus went in for the aggressive play. Cutting through incoming waves of missiles launched by the machine and collecting the released quintessence with her charge beam; she sought to descend down atop it with a thundercrack after forcing herself out of the apex of her leap and getting a bit of added height in from a full-powered shot while the machine sought to defend itself from Arne's power beam barrage coming out of his cannon so quickly it seemed like a continual stream with the individual shot sounds inaudible to most. Slashing her blade in swift strokes until she felt the shielding drop and then shooting the grapple beam out of her cannon to pull herself in for a thunderous kick, she was now where she needed to be.  
  
Her blink pack fired and she was now facing the weak point of the enemy. At the same time, Arne used his own device to warp out of the way of thermal beams spat forth from the Werizo's optics. She impacted hard, enough to throw the machine entirely off of its feet before she vaulted back and shot off her left-hand grapple beam.  
  
"Arne, pull!" She shouted, landing on her feet once more as the two yanked the machine closer to be met with their strongest possible weapons; impacting the Werizo with brutal force like meteorite impacts and sending the thing flying backwards in an uncontrolled manner across the room to hit the wall behind it and flop unceremoniously to the ground. But now, with its vitae meter down to half, the machine reared up once more and let out a shriek to signal that it was ready for battle once more, spreading out its wings and starting to take flight. Yet that wasn't the only source of that pinprick sensation of danger the two felt.

The shape caught Samus' eye once more as she dodged around its next volley. It was the horned shape again, and this time she swivelled around; deftly avoiding the Werizo's attacks to get a closer look, cannon at the ready. She had questions now, and she required answers as the glowing eyes of the figure loomed with the same twisted horns emerging from their head, creating that profile that refused to leave her sight. She chanced a signal ping in an attempt to get their attention.  
  
The figure turned towards them, and something above their arm split open to reveal a cylinder as trapezoidal segments opened up. Samus felt a massive surge of life or death danger that almost made her want to hide before she curled into the morph ball and rolled out of the way as fast as she could. A solar yellow lance of light like a supernova being vented in her direction erupted from the arm of the figure; the air igniting in thermonuclear reactions as molecules fizzled into atomic particulates and wreathing the beam in a corona of radioactive fire.  
  
On impact, the beam somehow chain-reacted, feeding into itself and then rippling outwards in a continually growing series of explosions. One of the subexplosions winged Samus and just like that an energy tank depleted itself, protecting her from a blast to reduce an army to dust. She grunted as Arne responded to the sudden drop in her shielding with alarm, moving towards her while the figure dropped to the ground. A heavy thud was made as they stood themselves up to a staggering height some four times taller than either of the pair, glaring down at them with a hollow-sounding metallic groan made at them.  
  
It stood on digitigrade legs ending in starfish-like feet encased in geometric armour. Its yellow and grey colouration reading like a hazard warning to her eyes now as burning yellow highlights illuminated gunmetal steel like plates. A faceplate like a smoothened carapace with no features save for its brilliant yellow diamond-like eyes stared out at the two and glowed like stars. Its hands; both the large combat arms and small manipulation limbs close to the chest had strange-looking, gangly clawed fingers that seemed almost too thin for something of its size and power. Wings of a geometric shape had panels of brilliant yellow. Its body gave an impression of might without being too bulky, speed without being too slender, and durability without being too solid. Their somewhat hunched over posture gave them an animalistic appearance; the visage of a predator, one whose ire was now focused squarely on them.  
  
There was a sense of fear now, a foe that should not be faced, a thing that should not be named.  
  
The scans identified it as a Sunstalker, but seemed almost confused as to its presence. A foe such as it was not supposed to be present in this day and age. Its kind were all supposed to have been sent beyond the veil long before humans had mastered metalworking. But the scans were certain of one thing; it was far beyond either of their abilities to deal with.  
  
A lashing blow from the being spat out a crescent wave that could have crushed cities and mountains that spread out across the room. Only two quick movements, Arne going over and Samus rolling under, allowed them to avoid the incoming waves, each swipe of the thing's arms creating another yellow crescent blast. But secondary explosions from the protest of sundered atoms caught them as they sought to blink into a different path only for it to predict their movements. They were pushed back as they were enveloped and then just barely caught by a fourth cutting wave that lashed out. An energy tank depleted instantly as they were thrown across the room fast enough to make a thundercrack as they hit the nearest wall. Pain briefly shot through them, but the foe only continued its advance towards them.  
  
But the hunter had not quite cleared the room of all other obstacles. The Guardian recognised the creature as something that did not belong, and would not allow this further interruption.  
  
The Werizo rose in challenge almost immediately; body wreathed in plasma fire as it sought to challenge its foe. But that shield of fusion hot temperatures meant nothing to the thing, which stabbed its hand through the barrier and grabbed the machine with a motion faster than a railgun. With a crushing motion, shielding that could have shrugged off a meteorite cracked with a flex of its fingers with a horrid shriek, and armour that could have taken starship fire was crushed like tissue paper.  
  
Freshly hot imploded metal was thrown like a projectile at the duo; wreathing itself in flame from friction. Only their quick reflexes allowed them to dodge it, but Samus had an idea. Taking her grapple beam; she planted her feet and latched onto the projectile, firing off her blink pack while she made a swinging motion to slam the projectile straight into the shield containing the Varia suit upgrade. The shield sputtered and failed from the redirected momentum as she landed back on her feet, letting out a huff as she saw the token now accessible.  
  
"+Arne, let's grab it and go!+" She said, getting him blinking to the statue in response; a motion she repeated as the two fired off another teleport immediately to finish the transformation process with some measure of safety.  
  
Orange and Sky Blue energy surrounded the pair as they shunted again through a hastily opened door; fusing into their suits and metamorphosising them into something new and improved. Samus curled into a brief fetal position and then lashed her arms out almost as if she was born anew; the limb armour on her suit taking on an orange hue while her visor and other highlights shifted from blue to green.  
  
Arne knelt for a moment, letting the sky blue energy fuse into himself as his armour shifted from blue to sky blue, his visor and suit highlights changing from scarlet to purple. And right before his eyes flashed a series of reports as his armour informed him of the ins and outs of its new abilities.  
  
The long and short of it was that virtually all capabilities; including physicality and the strength of the armour's actual material had been increased. But the real improvement was in the shielding, which was now not only generally more resistant to damage from all sources but was also virtually immune to most of the extremes of temperature. And they'd need that in a hurry as the pursuer smashed its way through the door and let out a hunting howl that keened inside their ears.  
  
The temperatures in the room increased exponentially. Temperatures more comparable to that of stars than anything that should exist in an atmosphere made themselves known as the pursuer stretched out its wings. Temperatures their suits shrugged off while they danced around a volley of solar yellow orbs of luminous energy loosed from weapons on one of its combat arms. Samus was nearly grazed by one such shot, and her distant sight made her feel a tingle within and without from the shellacking she just barely avoided.  
  
Arne's cannon whined and buzzed with the sawing electric arcs of neutrinos of his shock coil. Particles flowed to and from his cannon, recharging his shielding and Her arm cannon charged up and released; icy blue-white anti-energy striking at the chaser and forming a solid sheet of ice around them. It would not hold for long, but it didn't have to. The room's security fabricated a wall between them and the Sunstalker before it could break free, they had time to make a break out of the room, and it was time they made good use of as they sprinted out of the next door before blinking up onto a platform to the next entrance and throwing themselves into the nearest elevator as they heard the sounds of nearby gunfire and unearthly howls.  
  
But for now, the sensation of danger subsided.

The duo caught their breaths where possible and looked towards one another.  
  
"What was that thing?" Samus asked.  
  
"I have no idea...it's not supposed to be here...and we're not supposed to fight it. Maybe Spire and Armau-" He said, his voice dropping a bit with the final sentence as he started to think.  
  
"Arne, no, they're fine." She said, instantly dismissing the idea of their demise and shaking her head.  
  
"We just need to find them. If we link up with them, we could maybe..." She said, giving him enough time and space for him to finish her thought for him.  
  
"See if we can't get rid of it?" He said, thinking it over in his head. It might be out of their league at the moment, but with all four of them together and some additional upgrades beneath their belt...yes it could work.  
  
"And if we can show that we can take it down then we're sure to get commended for it right?" Samus said, smirking under her helmet. She didn't want him to worry about whether or not she was nervous about this plan of hers. She was nerve-wracked inside; the idea of meeting that thing again made her uneasy in the pit of her stomach. And yet, there was also a bit of excitement there. Part of her enjoyed the danger.  
  
A danger that a distant howl reminded them was not too far behind, and soon enough, they were off once more.

* * *

**Consolidated Logbook Entries**  
  
Logs: Commonwealth: Historical Interest: Civilian: State of the Facility  
  
Zoran has seen better days. Every passing cycle fewer and fewer come to visit it for its intended purpose. Halls of discussion that once hosted great strides in debate now lay silent. Creches that once teemed with the young of millions of species are empty. Wharves which once saw the fruit of the productive forces of the universe pass through are now bare. The old glories fade ever farther into memory, and new glories are ever rarer. But the seers request we make ready for dangers that may come in ages yet to happen. And so this facility now finds a new purpose. It will be a creche once again for warriors yet to hatch.  
  
 _Samus' notes:_  
  
Huuuh, who was the person who wrote this? They didn't sign their log...weird. I think we'll find who they are soon enough though.  
  
 _Arne's notes:_  
  
Now I really want to know...what would this place be like when it was active?  
  
Individuals: Organic: Alive: Noncombatant: Nonsapient: Federation: Hrundin: Female: Mendelle  
  
Mendelle is an unassuming and conventional Hrundin of the Hormung breed. No significant mutations are detected, and scans indicate no genetic diseases will manifest. Further analysis shows that Mendelle is distressed and nervous and is suffering from separation anxiety. While protected from harm via subdermal shield generator, Mendelle lacks any significant ability to defend herself from the local fauna and defence drones but remains uninjured. It is strongly recommended to evacuate Mendelle from the facility at the earliest possible convenience.  
  
 _Samus' Notes:_  
  
Aww poor girl's all alone out here. No need for her to worry, I'm ready to protect her.  
  
 _Arne's Notes:_  
  
It's a real shame she's got no one to look out for her...until now anyway. Why is she on her own?  
  
Individuals: Organic: Deceased: Noncombatant: Educator: Federation: Zadrim: Male: Vurdon Olmrg  
  
Vurdon Olmrg was the host of Vurdon's Curiosities; a Cybervid series focused on Vurdon's spelunking and safari tours to places of interest. Oriented primarily towards children and adolescents of species similar to himself, Vurdon enjoys a subscriber base of roughly thirty-nine billion, allowing him to self-finance but not achieving especially noteworthy success. Vurdon was noted for his larger than life presentation and often cavalier attitude towards danger paired with a mandatory emphasis that much of what he did should not be repeated at home. Vurdon was terminated by an energized bladed weapon that induced localized quark disruption in the pierced area following by a quintessence burst that burnt him from the inside out. Trace scans of leftover psychic energy suggest elevated fear at the time of death as well as brief but intense pain.  
  
 _Samus' Notes:_  
  
Wow...poor guy. How did he get here? And why couldn't the emergency teleporters save him? It's going to suck to deliver the notice of his death. We should come back later and put him to rest.  
  
 _Arne's Notes:_  
  
Whatever killed him is still here...we should find it, try and see how he passed and what we can do to make sure it doesn't happen again. Then we can tell his family we got justice.  
  
Species: Fauna: Synapsidoid: Therapsidoid: Mammaliform: Ungulate-Like: Non-Sapient: Herbivorous: Hostile: Kurdilm  
  
Kurdilms are a large and well known to be dangerous herbivorous species native to Zoran. Kurdilms are natively able to make use of quintessence to augment their durability and their physicality. While lacking in ability to threaten at range, Kurdilms are able to charge at incredible speeds which when combined with their quintessence and mass; allows them to deal tremendous damage. Though they are poor at turning, they are able to see at all angles, allowing them to prepare their stance to prevent flanking. Jumping is recommended to attack them from different angles.  
  
 _Samus' Notes:_  
  
The Ice Beam should work to keep them out of harm's way without them bothering us later. I wouldn't want to cause them any unnecessary hurt anyway.  
  
 _Arne's Notes:_  
  
Given their lack of vertical movement, just staying airborne should be enough to dodge around them. It'd be...more problematic in a room where we couldn't do that though.  
  
Mechanoids: Faera: Multiple Purpose: Combat Capable: Minor Sentinels  
  
Built in the humanoid shape of armoured Faera, Minor Sentinels are disposable drones designed for low priority tasks. Making use of the arcanotech, the Faera are known for; Minor Sentinels can distribute their quintessence across a formation. This will keep each member of a formation in perfect fighting condition until the collective quintessence pool of the Minor Sentinels is depleted, allowing for large numbers to absorb tremendous amounts of punishment. However, the arkalyst crystals mounted on the arms of the Minor Sentinels are vulnerable to high impact weapons, temporarily disarming them while they are left to try and regenerate the damage.  
  
 _Samus' Notes:_  
  
It's weird how much the Faera look like humans and Aelva. Maybe there's some common ancestry...but their drones are easy enough to take down, area of effect weapons work wonders.  
  
 _Arne's Notes:_  
  
My parents told stories of the Faera. Mysterious and reclusive but irresistible all the same. Their machinery is a lot like their makers...mysterious but I can't help but want to know more.  
  
Mechanoids: Chozo: Multiple Purpose: Combat Capable: Werizo  
  
Werizos are a form of Chozo automated combatant that serves as an aerial platform built in the image of the evolutionary ancestors of the Chozo. Created to emphasize particular aesthetic tastes popular among many Chozo artists nostalgic for the era when the Chozo were a winged species, the Werizo is as much a work of art as it is a multiuse combat platform. This particular make is designed to engage with weapon systems based around the extremes of temperature as well as in close combat. Weapon systems for all ranges of combat are detected, but a specific preference for melee if possible is evident in its arsenal's focus on suppressive fire that allows it to close the distance.  
  
 _Samus' Notes:_  
  
The design makes you wonder about the evolutionary path of the Chozo. How their form changed over millions of years...I feel bad about having to smash it up for the test. But with its weak points being pretty obvious, I think I have this handled.  
  
Arne's Notes:  
  
I have to say I think I like Chozo aesthetics better. Much...more like a thing I can identify than the Crash Pillars and such back home. On my own this would be a hard fight, but with Samus I think this should be simple.  
  
Individuals: Organic: Active: Combatant: Dangerous: Old Foe: Unknown: Unknown: Sunstalker One  
  
Scans of the individual in question show similarities to ancient data from more than one hundred and fourteen thousand Earth years ago. However, technological advancements from that era can be observed from the initial analysis. These advancements have served to keep pace with the changes to Chozo and Alimbic systems over the millennia. Included in this suite of technology are scan bafflers, preventing more in-depth readouts of the subject's abilities.  
  
The subject is demonstrably able to brute force its way through many forms of former Commonwealth security systems and as such is to be considered extremely dangerous. Regenerative multi-layered shielding capable of blocking phasic or extradimensional attacks and hostile teleportation or cosmological alteration attacks protects the target, leaving the capabilities of its armour unknown. A large number of weapons have been detected, most based on systems capable of enormous power output or manipulation of highly esoteric physical properties.  
  
Scan systems appear to be roughly equivalent, and the cybernetic warfare capabilities of the subject remain as of yet unknown. However, while able to overcome standard level technology, they are incapable of interfacing with your exploration suit and data acquired from previous victims suggests that your anti-technopathic defences are more than sufficient to lock it out. No direct combat paranormal abilities have been observed, and its responses indicate a lack of distant sight. Physical combat abilities are demonstrably significant, and direct confrontation should be avoided.  
  
Recommended Action: Avoid conflict with until acquisition of higher quality equipment.  
  
 _Samus' Notes:_  
  
How is one of these things supposed to be here? They were supposed to be locked away in a prison universe that could never be reaccessed. Must have been a leftover. But where was it hiding for all these years? I need answers, but I can't get them now.  
  
 _Arne's Notes:_  
  
Can't even begin to try and fight this thing now. We're completely outgunned by something that shouldn't even be here. How is it here? It doesn't make sense...how could one just go undetected for so long? Spire might know...or Armaud...they always know.  
  
Upgrades: Armour: Physical modification: Thermal Defenses: Multiple Makers: Varia Suit  
  
The Varia suit represents a significant increase in defensive capabilities over the standard power suit. Not only is the physical structure of the suit augmented and its shielding resistance doubled, but the Varia upgrade allows the user to ignore most of the extremes of temperature. While quintessence bolstered thermal or cryogenic attacks can still have some effect, the wearer is now able to operate without shield drain in virtually any temperature. All armour physicals are substantially augmented, and most forms of corrosive agents are rendered ineffective against both the shielding and plating.  
  
 _Samus' Notes:_  
  
Now, this is something I don't think I could do without...there's so many new places I could poke around with this. So many new enemies I can take on without a care. Hah! Okay, this is definitely worth getting close to that thing for.  
  
 _Arne's Notes:_  
  
The utility you can get out of something like this is incredible. I can't really think of a lot of situations where this isn't just better to have than the normal power suit. But is it going to be enough? I hope so...


	15. Forlorn: Stalk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Samus and Arne hatch a plan to deal with the Sunstalker

_Thermarium, Lolondr, Zorant_

  
The temperatures of the Thermarium were high, of course. Molten metal poured in enormous falls and clouds of silicate vapour wafted through the large chamber that the two found themselves entering. The craggy and rough-looking architecture left little doubt that this was a facility built by the Diamonts. They advanced fearlessly through the incredible heat, her ice beam and his Blizzard being used to freeze platforms for them to traverse to avoid slogging through viscous molten materials.  
  
Thermal distortions presented only a minor obstacle for them as they blinked up onto a taller platform before curling into their respective alt-modes to slide into a tunnel. The writhing tendrils of a Magrakal poked out from the molten metal beneath the tunnel, visible to the duo in their third-person point of view in this form. Unable to reach at them through the tunnel's transparent hyraxicrystal windows, the cephalopod like creature simply poked its mantle through the magma, eyeing them with brilliant orange lenses before diving back into the depths of the pool below. Such was hardly the only obstacle in their path, as ahead was a pool of magma, a series of paths and platforms that would require careful jumps in their alternate forms to cross through; especially as centipede-like Skradal drones dove in and out of the magma to look for targets.  
  
The distant howl of the Sunstalker gave them only the briefest pause as they crossed the challenge with dextrous ease. Making careful usage of their alternate forms weapons to clear out the drones in their path while combining their movement tools to traverse from section to section. With one last boost straight through a target by Samus followed by a psycho-pulse from clearing out a path, they were through to where they needed to go at the tallest platform. There they claimed an energy tank as their reward before using the spider ball to crawl up a shaft to their next destination, adding a bit more to their already formidable durability. And with that, they had added yet another entry in a line of collectable upgrades off the beaten path that they could lay claim to bolster their prowess.  
  
On the other end was the sight of a great deal of wreckage strewn about in odd patterns. Damaged natural features and rearranged local geography, shattered stone and metal, energy lashed structures. Few animals were still here, the tripedal Magstriders that normally visited this place having withdraw to a far corner of the room, the dozens of meters tall creatures clearly afraid of something. Other animal corpses were strewn about, and Samus felt herself frowning.  
  
"There was a fight here...getting trace signs of Armaud and Spire's weapons." She said, tracing her fingers across the dusty remnants of something struck by Svihaly's thunderer weapon, crystalline patterns within the stone clearly shocked by heavy impacts. Elsewhere she could see objects scorched by something far hotter than the clouds of vapour in the area. Further analysis showed traces of the energies of the Sunstalker as well, still lingering to objects scalded by terrible forces.  
  
"This terminal should give us access to the security footage here. I think it should help explain what happened at least." Arne said, signalling over to hear as his suit interfaced with the diamont computer in front of him. The crystal responded to his signal and opened its security systems up to him to give him a wealth of data that flowed into his armour computer.  
  
"Let me see." She said, stepping over to him after turning to his direction. The urgency in her voice let him know that it was best to give her what she asked for immediately, though of course he had no intention of delaying.  
  
"Here...I've gone through the data for anything that might be related. This should be the relevant stuff." He said. His brain had worked through the data faster than most computers could manage,  
  
"Send me everything though, just in case." She said, giving him a nod, ready for the transfer that he gave to her.  
  
Together they saw the armoured frame of Svihaly in its shades of green and purple. Some two hundred and forty-two centimetres tall, the sentinel of the N'kren's twin optics looked down at the recording drone through a pair of lenses that gave the impression of angular purple robotic eyes fitted atop the recesses of the somewhat barbute like "helm" that encased the chassis of her head. The upward curvature of her pauldrons and the somewhat pronounced gorget of her suit gave the uppermost part of her body a distinctly powerfully armoured appearance. Her frame was built for power and endurance, the curves of the plating fitted atop it suggesting stylised musculature interspersed with more rigid plates fitting for someone of great strength even though her body was all metal. On her right arm was cannon, with a grilled base below her elbow giving way to a glowing green tube-like structure fitted with struts and ending in what almost seemed to be claws arranged like a compass, just barely avoiding obstructing the cannon. Her boots gave the impression of insectile feet, while her chest bore three strikes markings on each pectoral.  
  
"Spire. We have a problem." She said, her voice bassy and metallic. She had turned away from the drone, looking towards the powerful Diamont as he examined what was now a scattered series of rubble but had once been an impressive looking statue. He seemed to be almost mourning the loss of such fine art made by his people, a low, heavy sound coming from him as he lowered his head in apparent grief.  
  
He rumbled to himself briefly before turning his heavyset head around to her; orange eyes fixated on his counterpart. "Beyond the vandalism to ancient history? There aren't any new craftsmen like this...nothing else like this will ever be made and they go and smash it." He said, his voice in a sorrowful tone clearly upset by the wanton destruction he had seen done to the artifice of his people.  
  
"The Sunstalker is scrambling our homers on the children. We are separated from them, and thus they are vulnerable. We can handle ourselves against the beast; they cannot. And if they die..." She started with an ominous tone.  
  
"...Yes I'm aware of what's expected of the two. That's why I'm trying to speak. Not with your words but with the words of the stone. Stone will be able to record words that the creature cannot hear. Words that it wouldn't understand even if it could breach into this computer. But words I am sure they'll hear when they come to the right place." He said, ruminating as he continued to hum in infrasonic tones inaudible to conventional human ears with his second set of lungs; speaking while maintaining the long song.  
  
"Clever. But what will you do with the Sunstalker? It won't be too far away now, certainly when it has the scent of the children. I suggest we bring it here. The creature is a coward, it fears facing us...but if we make it think easier targets are here we can force it into a fight. Then perhaps we'll see if the thing can bleed as the old stories say." Svihaly said, gesturing to the area around them.  
  
"Amidst all these relics and treasures? Sure, let's just wreck what little is left..." He said, Svihaly pausing and giving him a particularly cold glare before he let out a brief, earthquake-like laugh. "I'm only kidding. If it's the only way, I'll do it. I might not like it, but I'll do it." He said, causing Svihaly to release her tension, shifting her posture ever so slightly before she looked at the field before her with ideas for where to set up their ambush.  
  
"There..." She said, gesturing off of where the camera was able to see.  
  
Fast-forwarding slightly, Samus and Arne saw the two engaging the Sunstalker as it entered the room. A flurry of weapons fire with armaments beyond even their best lashed out at the Sunstalker. A foe which seemed to be surprised by their emergence, flailing and wailing as the pair of ancients beset it. Spire rushed in with his tackle, curling into his dialanche and whirling away with a deadly suite of weapons while Armaud rushed in with her arm scythe extended. A blow was made, followed up by a blast as the Sunstalker hurtled backwards before unleashing a massive pulse.  
  
The solar flare exploded outwards with power and majesty akin to a real version of its namesake. Even things meant to inundate themselves in Carbon vapor and molten tungsten incinerated instantly while a storm of nuclear radiation erupted outwards. High energy ionizing particles and a ferocious shockwave that the duo barely blinked in time to avoid. The thing conjured up a series of circular rifts overhead from which stellar streams of plasma vomited forth like satellite beams, dragging themselves around in patterns meant to chase the old pair.  
  
Spire pulled back and let loose his own barrage; a coruscating inferno engulfing that portion of the room while Armaud's own deadly assault filled that section of the room with green. The drone feed cut off briefly as the images switched to another recording device's perspective, where the Sunstalker had hurtled a series of coruscating orbs burning like the sun itself towards them. Each spitting out a deadly lance of fusion reactant before they detonated, beam weapons fire traded in return while the Sunstalker stumbled from the heavy barrages of missile fire it was taking. Eventually, the Sunstalker decided to smash through a wall after being bull-rushed by Spire to take a blow to the head from Armaud's foot that sent it careening off its feet. Clearly even the stalker had its limitations, but all of this was well beyond what either Samus or Arne could do at the moment. Too fast, too much firepower, too many tools being switched between constantly even in this abbreviated highlight reel.  
  
Spire shook his head and looked towards Armaud. "Should we chase them down?" He asked as the Sunstalker stepped through one of its own circular gates.  
  
"We'll need to bait it again, with something else...it won't fall for the same trick next time. But our priority should be meeting with the children. They'll need our protection." She said.  
  
"Agreed." Spire said as the feed ended, leaving Samus to grin widely beneath her helmet before elbowing Arne in the side. She was over the moon herself even while Arne tapped his helmet with clear concern. She sensed that concern, and he sensed her enthusiasm, and for a moment their conflicting emotions were shared across that link before they snapped back to their own, native feelings. Albeit ever so slightly dimmed so that she came a bit closer to Earth while he felt a bit better about his situation.  
  
"See, I told you they were fine." Samus said cheekily. She clapped a hand on his shoulder and made him flinch forward slightly, but he straightened himself and nodded at her, resting one of his hands on hers.  
  
"We were pretty lucky it didn't go all out on us though...I mean, yeah it's nice to know they're looking for us but we also have...that looking for us!" Arne said.  
  
"Well...we just need to keep moving and get stronger then don't we? We're pretty good at running away too I'd say." She seemed so sure of herself that Arne couldn't help but share in that confidence as he nodded and thought about her wisdom. Yeah, she was right, they were going to be fine he thought.  
  
"I didn't say to not take it seriously, just...I think everything will work out okay for us." She said,  
  
"Yeah...we should probably get going too. This would be an awful place to get desuited." Arne said as he looked up at a grappleable surface and then at Samus.  
  
"Agreed, come on. There's probably something worth checking out up top." She said as the pair fired off their grapple beams and yanked themselves towards the ceiling, firing at a door and swinging themselves through the entrance onto the other side.

Staring at them in the face on the other side was not the signs of combat they were expecting but a relatively pristine environment. Rather featureless even, merely a way to get from one place to the next. But without significant obstacles in the way, they recorded their progress in an emergency station and continued on their path. Little of interest occurred for a few minutes of thorough but brisk searching through a few more pathways. They cleared their way through the drones that emerged from the halls with little trouble, gathered some scan logs of interest to them, and collected a few items of interest to augment themselves. A new sub-weapon known as the Autoflak was acquired after a brief puzzle, as were modifications to their thrusters to allow for temporary flight, and a regenerator pack to augment the rate at which their shielding could recharge and armour could regrow.  
  
But as they moved over a series of quick-moving platforms, they caught a Diamont statue holding something towards the top of the room past a series of shifting barriers. Moving platforms offered them a route to the figure atop its balcony, and an imposing wall that their scan visors said was resonating at an unusual frequency lay behind it. The two only needed to give each other a wordless nod to one another to acknowledge their next path. Both shared a keen interest in what could lay in that statue, and quickly put themselves to the task of getting there. Getting up to the needed height was a simple task, even with rapidly moving obstacles and a few moving wall jumping challenges that tested their ability to bounce from one place to another quickly and the guardians there were no real match for them. Once there, they cracked open the shell of the sphere the Diamont's outstretched hands held and vaulted on top, grabbing the floating token of a gun firing a series of ovoid projectiles straight ahead.  
  
Their cannons glowed as soon as they let out a single shot of the new beam to test it against the brittle wall behind them, shattering it with a burst of created air and a wave of sonic jackhammering force that rode with it. The vibrational energy resonated with the wall and caused the whole building-sized thing to crumble into microscopic dust. Behind was a door that they quickly shot through, bringing them into a space where a series of inward-facing statues ringed around a circular area known as the ring of guardians. A series of doors were on the outermost ring of the circular room, clearly marking this place as a transit area.  
  
But one statue was resonating in a particular manner that Arne recognized.  
  
"Hey Samus, take a look at this." He said indicating towards the statue of a Diamont who looked somewhat reminiscent of Spire. While an average human wouldn't be able to notice the subtle way it was vibrating; it was clear as day to his superhuman senses.  
  
"It's moving but...what's that supposed to mean?" She said as he touched the vibrating statue gingerly.  
  
"Spire visited me a lot when I was younger...he taught me to recognize old long songs. I think this is what they were talking about in the video earlier...some sort of way of passing messages that the Sunstalker can't understand." He said as he felt the intended message and allowed the mystic incantation to seep into him.  
  
"Well, what's he saying? Where to meet up with him?" She asked, curiously looking at the process.  
  
"No...not quite yet...we need to find something he's indicating to us. It'll be important to both our examination and help even the odds. It's just a bit...out of the way. There's a number of item guardians along the road." He said, looking to her.  
  
"Is that all? Spire usually has a bit...more to say to us than that." She said, folding her arms.  
  
"Well...he also says that he's rooting for us." He said, slightly hesitantly as he flushed beneath his helmet.  
  
"Aww, that's sweet. I'm hoping he makes it out alright too." She said, giving him a thumbs up and a cheery grin.  
  
"...No not rooting for us as in success, he meant rooting for us as in being us, you know, you and I." He said, awkwardly and shyly laughing a bit as Samus blushed a bit under her helmet too in response to that.  
  
"Well, I appreciate that thought too. But ahh...hah...let's get going?" She said with an awkward laugh at the end as she tried to blow it off. She was supposed to keep her calm, why was she not keeping her cool now?  
  
"Yeah let's...we should probably head down the door with the missile lock. It should take us to where we need to go." He said, gesturing to the barricaded door.  
  
A missile erupted into existence and blasted off the lock almost immediately after as Samus made a come hither gesture that Arne followed dutifully. The next few minutes were a blaze of rushing through the obstacles. Guardian Drones rose to challenge them more than a few times, but each time they were put down. Puzzles expertly laid out were deduced and solved in seconds by their keen minds to achieve continued progress as their repertoire expanded gradually. Systems to enhance their shielding's durability, armour strength enhancement, a new electroperception visor and as for new weapons; pyro-missiles, ice bombs, grapple voltage, the power missile charge combo, and the magnum cannon sub-weapon all found their way into their arsenals after collecting them.  
  
But as they made their way through a section of the high-temperature region of Gorgomoch, they felt a sudden rush of great danger flooding their prescient senses. As they rushed down a bridge in speed booster mode, their suits picked up the vibrations of an incoming howl. The same dreadful cry of the Sunstalker echoed throughout the passageway, seeming to be everywhere as that piercing sound reverberated through the air and even into the molten metal below them. The cry seemed to rouse the anger of something in the molten metal below, and tendrils emerged while living metal crocodile-like Olgromaks pulled themselves free of the molten Tungsten.  
  
Shaking off the dripping metal from their hides and snapping their jaws together, the _Deinosuchus_ sized monsters let loose hissing and crackling sounds as their burning eyes focused on the pair. A mouth that could crush coal into diamond snapped at them as one approached, rearing itself into a fully upright position as the heavy beast's body brimmed with predatory aggression. One threw itself into the attack, seeking to clamp down on Samus who jumped overhead and dodged one of the skyscraper-sized tentacles that tried to swing itself at her. Acting quickly, she grabbed onto it with her grapple beam and causing the tentacle to bend downwards even as it tried to pull at her to throw herself to kick one of the Olgromaks in the side.  
  
The thunderclap impact knocked the living metal life form off of its magnetized feet and sent it in a roll back into the pools of Tungsten where boiling superheated metal exploded outwards, harmlessly dripping off of their shielding. At the same time, Arne checked one of the charging animals head-on and dug in his heels. After adjusting his footing while Samus fired off her ice beam over one of the silicate vapour clouds overhead to create a large chunk of bitterly cold rock that fell atop the head of the monster closest to her. It stumbled as its six eyes shut as the rock exploded in thermal shock and its metal scutes groaned in protest before Arne threw one of the heavy monsters to bowl the one closest to her over, sending both of them tumbling into the molten metal.  
  
"The Sunstalker must be driving them mad...but how?" Samus asked after dodging the enormous tentacles of the Azagal, silicoid pillars of rocky flesh sweeping across the pathway like a building flung sideways. Feeling herself in the midst of a jump that she bolstered with a second mid-air leap, she ducked beneath a jabbing motion by one of the tentacles while firing off at a leaping Olgromak to freeze its jaw shut before briefly landing atop the molten tungsten lake. Her boots made more of a clang than a splash against the viscous material, her shielding holding fine as she ran across the top of the material to reposition herself, dodging around another leaping pseudo-crocodile and leaping back onto the main bridge.  
  
While Arne pushed a tentacle that had managed to catch him while he was avoiding multiple flying Olgromak young, Samus decided that she needed to do something about one of the tendrils. After mumbling an apology to the Azagral that produced the enormous tentacle that swung itself towards her, she charged and then overcharged an ice beam shot. A keening shriek made itself heard as the ball of ice around her cannon expanded before releasing itself in a ferocious burst after she fed it some of her shield energy to strike with a ninefold bolt that froze the tendril from top to bottom in a bright flash of blue and white. The craggy silicoid tentacle began to crumble beneath its weight, the binding energy of its molecules nullified like the rest of it as it fell apart into so much dust with a deafening shriek. The already high temperatures of the room and the creature were a weakness more than strength as thermal shock did what energy nullification could not. The keen of heat and cold reacting gave way to a deafening crack and a shattering sound and chunks of tendril rained all around, fragmenting like a glass sculpture to never be reassembled again.  
  
"Pretty impressive," Arne said.  
  
"Don't mention it; we're still going to need to get out of here." She said.  
  
"Luckily I don't think the Azagal's up for taking another shot from that." He said, gesturing to the other tentacles withdrawing from the fight, sinking back into the depths of the metal pools and leaving only scattered beasts for them to clear out. Arne took care of most of them, having focused on trying to clear out the chaff while Samus busied herself with the big foe; but the two seamlessly joined back together to combine their efforts. The two let loose with the blizzard sub-weapon to spit out gouts of anti-energy in front of them that engulfed broad sections of the area in front of them with frost and ice that quickly boiled into steam as they gradually forced the remaining animals to think better of their attempts to attack them and retreat into the metal pool.  
  
"Pretty great work there!" Samus said as she shared an elbow bump with Arne.  
  
"Hey, we do pretty well together. Didn't want this to be an exception to that. Because well...why start a bad habit right?" He said, laughing just a bit.  
  
"Arne, come on, you did great, don't try to play down a compliment. I'm not Zurvduat with his mind-games. I'm your well...I like you." She said, fumbling with her words briefly before finding something she could force herself to say while knowing that the Elders were observing her.  
  
"Yeah, I'm...I mean...I like you too..." He said with a bit of a shy chuckle. "And thanks...for not doing mind games...it's nice to have someone I can just...talk to." He said, getting a hand on his shoulder from Samus.  
  
"I can't wait to see the stars with you...we're going to d-" She paused as she felt that needle sensation of danger and the imminent visions of harm warned them as Samus shouted. "Get moving!" She said, pushing Arne and getting the two of them sprinting down the path.  
  
Burning solar plasma erupted to their sides and spun themselves into circles that grew wider and wider. Before the solar beams could emerge from the portals that had opened themselves, the pair ran as quickly as they could, firing off their speed boosters once again and vaulting through a series of roadblocks. All the while, they were weaving through the thicket of portals opening and the beams they unleashed. What was clear, though, was that whatever they were heading towards; the Sunstalker did not want them to find.

The portals opened in increasingly complex patterns to catch the pair with vented solar energy. Each screech of reality tearing open and the fury of a star being spat out filling their ears as their helmets reproduced the audio of the detected vibrations. They sped through the twisting corridors ahead as quickly as possible, careful maneuvres and evasive actions made at every possibility to try and keep the Sunstalker's solar gates from leading on them. Neither of the pair was in a hurry to find out how much damage the solar scourges would have done, and they found themselves having to blitz through multiple obstacle courses to keep ahead.  
  
A scourging beam exploded just in front of Samus who had to stop herself all at once before Arne yanked her back with his grapple beam. "Keep going!" He shouted as he looked down and shot open a door, checking briefly to make sure she was still coming with him before seeing her hurtle down in morph ball form to speed her descent up. He transformed into his alternate form shortly afterwards, letting the two roll through a series of tunnels as enormous chunks of wall and tunnel material were torn through by the solar gates that opened up near them. Each near-miss rang in their systems like a punch to the genitals. Arne's overactive imagination refused to pull away from thinking of being scalded by such heat, replaying that dread scenario over and over. Samus couldn't help but cringe at every near miss, her body flinching and her jaw clenching with every closer and closer rush of molten fury.  
  
But before they could get into a more open section with more room to manoeuvre, they were struck by one of the solar beams as the Sunstalker funnelled into a series of difficult to avoid gates surrounding them. An all-consuming impact that reverberated through their bones that felt like it was boring into their very souls. They persevered and fired off the blink packs in alt mode, having had a pair of energy tanks each depleted from the impact and a sensation of having had a building dropped on their skulls as they recovered their momentum. Indeed, a harsh blow even with the Varia Suit and the shielding hardness and field resistance upgrades they had received cutting the impact down to just ten per cent of its normal strength.  
  
They couldn't afford to take many hits like that without the space and time to regenerate their shielding and with quintessence orbs in short supply as the tunnels vacated itself of lesser foes. Their nerves were grating like steel on flint, every hair in their transformed state seeming to be sensible as every detail became a millionfold sharper and time seemed to flow at a fraction of its regular rate. Samus could just about feel her heart in her mouth, Arne felt his stomach trying its level best to implode. Was it fear? Maybe, but it could also have been a rush of adrenaline, unlike anything ever felt before. Death was legitimately on the line, and the spectre of the reaper gave them an additional clarity of action that the certainty of safety never could. Through being so close to death, they felt a bit more alive. Samus almost felt thrilled by it, soaring as much as terror sought to drag her down, while every thought seemed natural to Arne as if this was where he was meant to be.  
  
Plasma wafted outwards behind them, a testament to the power of the sunbeams that carved through the facility with a fury sufficient to disintegrate asteroids. Blinding lights and intense heat invaded their senses, ear-splitting sounds and the strange, ozone like scent of the plasma assaulted them. But still, the pair moved as if their lives depended on it, uncurling after throwing their alternate forms off of a ramp and shooting the nearest door. Their legs carried them still faster, jumping and then shinesparking to the left to evade a corridor filling beam that had opened in front of them and cutting through the kilometre-long hall almost instantly. A portal opened up behind them, and only quick thinking with their blink packs prevented them from flying directly into the path of the beam as they came across a more open space. A large arena with a Torizo clearly waiting for them, its deception as an ordinary, unpresumptuous Chozo statue holding an upgrade waiting for the taking hardly fooling them.  
  
Sun gates began to open, only for the whole facility to shake from another of the stalker's howls as heavy weapons fire reverberated through the ground. All at once, the ring gates spun out of existence and dissipated into a shower of harmless sparks. The sensation of danger had faded immediately, and relief made itself known to them with the certainty of being struck by lightning. At last, they could breathe, and Samus took a second to look at Arne as they stood still for a second. She looked at the Torizo in its dormant state, in the stylized shape of a wingless Chozo and then she took a moment to look at herself and just laughed. She almost doubled over as the tension fell off of her like a coat. Her expression was locked in the biggest possible grin on her face as Arne started to give a few chuckles himself.  
  
"Why am I laughing? We could have died there! But...gods of my ancestors we're alive somehow! We....hah...we showed that thing, right? Gods, I was terrified!" Arne said as his chuckles started to turn into genuine laughter. He had his triumph over a danger that would have rattled the nerves of most of his elders, and he felt good for it. He was panting and sweating, not from exhaustion but from the cooldown of coming off such an adrenaline high.  
  
"Oh, spirits blessed that was a close one, huh? Almost thought we might not be able to make it but...we are pretty great, aren't we? But I mean, how could we not have made it? We've got so much to do and see." She said, smiling a bit as her laughter started to fade, straightening herself and relaxing. She breathed out and stretched, rolling her muscles and shoulders in a practised motion meant to ease her nerves. The world seemed to go back to normal, and there she was with him, the hot air outside their suits choked with small but fine clouds of dust.  
  
A moment of concentration was all they needed to regenerate their shielding back to full strength. Samus and Arne's energy tanks filled up in moments, and all the systems that fed information into their minds were reading as operating at standard capacity. Their armour cleaned off the sweat on their bodies once the fluid had served its purpose. In the blink of an eye, they were now good to go.  
  
"Ready to claim that upgrade?" Samus said, elbowing Arne slightly as he turned towards her and gave a nod.  
  
"Yeah. It's not what we're supposed to be looking for, but it'll be helpful." He said, giving her a thumbs up in imitation of one of her favourite gestures and beaming at her beneath his helm. After escaping that particular death trap earlier, he felt like he could do anything. For a moment, he shared Samus' boundless confidence, and he could scarcely think of Zurvduat's criticisms anymore. The needling comments about his substandard performance were no longer in his mind; he had done right and would revel in that.  
  
Samus was less focused on the praise of others, but she had bested her greatest challenge yet, and that was enough to put her heart alight with pride and satisfaction. A fight with a Torizo would be easy after that? Why worry in the slightest? She certainly had no intention of letting any further doubts about her ability to handle this cloud her mind. She could not only do this; she could keep Arne safe and see him flourish at the same time. For her objectives, that was excellent progress.  
  
From their scan visors, they could tell that the Torizo guarded a new armour upgrade, and the fight with it would at least be something approaching conventional. A less nerve-wracking engagement with the animated statue as soon as they laid their claim to it. Something relaxing after a hard minute or so of frantic evasion and dodging to put themselves more at ease.  
  
Energy flowed into their armours once again, transforming and altering it into a more resilient form. The portions of their armour that had once been orange and sky blue respectively had changed to a vivid and forest green instead. Their visors shifted in colour as well, Samus' to yellow, Arne's to orange. The Desolation Suit, not only would it improve their overall functions and increase their baseline shielding impact resistance to 75%; which when combined with their other upgrades offered 95% total resistance; but it also granted their shielding and armour plating immunity to virtually any damaging chemical reactant. But once this had been acquired, as expected the Torizo had come to life, shedding off a shell of inanimate stone to stand itself up and awaken its optics with blazing yellow lights.  
  
The mottled green coloured animate statue let out its roar of challenge, and the two engaged it in a somewhat routine battle. It sent forth energy shockwaves in raking crescents from its claws; they dodged and assailed it with a fusillade of charge shots and missiles. It sought to grab onto them; they met it with ice bombs and skilful melee blade work. It took a few minutes of labour, but the Torizo was soon reduced to dust by a tandem shot from the pair as they fired their charged beams together in such a way as to allow the energies to merge. The impact obliterating the now shieldless Torizo and leaving them the space needed to carry on their way.  
  
"Do you think we'll be able to help out Armaud and Spire? I don't want to be a bystander when they're risking their lives for us. I've...been there, not being able to help. I don't want to be helpless when other people are hurt or fighting for me." Arne said, fighting back bitter memory fragments and the dreadful sensation of cold and heat at the same time, trying to avert his mind's eye from imagining those five serpentine heads and that awful cackle.  
  
Samus nodded and offered him her hand to squeeze to banish the fright that he felt. She understood all too well the feeling of being left unable to do more than just watch the world burn.  
  
"Don't worry; we'll find a way. It's what we're to learn how to do, aren't we? We wouldn't be able to be the heroes we want to be if we couldn't." She said as she walked them through a door to an elevator, taking them to the next area. A quick stop to the recording station and they were soon off on the transit elevator, taking them quickly to a jaunt through Elemara. A polluted zone originally meant to offer habitation to very peculiar life forms now serving as a hazard training facility, fuel gel pooling into basins as it poured from outfalls in great streams. At the same time, a gas that could eat through the hull of a starship gathered in foul looking clouds.  
  
With their new suits, going through was of no real risk at all, and the drones that emerged to provide them a challenge were dispatched just as quickly as they appeared. A few minutes passed as they rushed through the rooms and dealt with the enemies that tried to oppose them, and they found themselves before a grand gate into what was something of importance.  
  
Arne stopped them briefly as he looked at another vibrating statue, touching it to hear the message that Spire had left them before looking back at her. "We're getting close to where we need to go. Not sure what we're likely to find here...but I think the way we're taking is going to save us on a lot of time to reach it than if we headed there the "normal" route." Arne said.  
  
"Hrm, that's awfully unorthodox of you Arne." She said cheekily.  
  
"Hey, I'm not completely by the book." He protested jokingly.

With that brief exchange out of the way, they proceeded through the grand gate. The door winked open like an eye-opening its lids and allowed the pubescents into a room that seemed entirely too tall for its intended purpose. Alcoves and balconies dotted it everywhere, containers lying in wait while Lurim drones walked from place to place with the usage of their tentacles; standing as tall as giraffes and extending optic stalks to look around. Smaller Narumod drones like nautiloids flew around, orbiting their larger counterparts.  
  
Also within the room was the eerie architecture of the Salamik who had designed it. Smooth and organic, almost like flesh made of metal more than anything, typically referred to as technology. The cephalopod like countenances of the Salamik were represented in figure form like silent witnesses. And upon each was a thicket of squid-like arms emerging from inscrutable faces immortalized in fleshmetal. Long walking tentacles that emerged from the midsection kept the statues aloft, and the eyes moulded into the statues seemed entirely too lifelike.  
  
"Kind of creepy," Arne said as they walked through a thick gas cloud, making use of their electroperception visor to retain sight even when visible light was entirely obscured. The world seemed to be a mist illuminated by the squiggling arcs and currents of every object's electromagnetic field, resulting in somewhat abstract shapes that the two needed only a moment to adjust to. However, there was an unusual sight hidden within the clouds. A field laid against a wall that seemed closer to what their suits looked like in this view than anything else in the room. And hesitantly, they decided to approach.  
  
"What do you think it is?" Arne asked. He remained a bit further behind, taking a moment to check the drones for any signs of hostility before taking a position to guard her back.  
  
"I think it's..." She said as she drew closer, only to gasp and recoil backwards in shock. The sight was something that made her feel sick to the stomach and shudder in astonishment. She felt the tingle of unease crawl down her spine and make her want to leap back as far as she could.  
  
"Samus?!" Arne said as Samus breathed out in alarm. Just the idea of her of all people getting spooked in such a way rang alarm bells for him. It just wasn't something that was ever supposed to happen.  
  
"Arne...that's..." She said, pointing to the figure as Arne finally got close enough to see it through the poison mist. What he saw made his jaw drop.  
  
"That's a human," He said in hushed tones as the dead explorer became clear to him, confronted with a corpse of his species seemed to rattle him more than most deaths could. A grim reminder of mortality? Or that the first other human besides Samus he'd seen in person since the day he was orphaned was this horrible, mangled dead body. Clad in chrome armour that had been rent open with their body a hollowed-out husk-like what had happened to Vurdon earlier. The symbol of the galactic federation was clear as day on their shoulder, and the turquoise visor gave a brief glimpse of a skeletonized face. Their corpse was laid in repose against the wall, the scan visors of the two booting to life immediately as they sought to determine the cause of such a death.  
  
"Subject armour logs indicate that the individual is Sergeant Melinda Graves. Armour computer logs record an extradimensional event bringing them and their brigade to this location chasing a formation of space pirates. Melinda was terminated by injuries identical to those suffered by Vurdom, with medical logs indicating a heightened level of fear before being executed following a long pursuit. Armour and remains have been tampered with by unknown technologies to prevent degradation within the corrosive clouds, suggesting that it serves as a trophy. Final logs downloaded for user consumption." Read their armour A.Is as Samus knelt to look into the empty eye sockets of Melinda's body, with Arne laying his hand on the helmet and muttering a prayer of speedy passage to the afterlife.  
  
"This is the second incident of this place bringing in people who aren't supposed to be here...that can't be a coincidence," Samus said. A sentence followed by telling her apologies to Melinda's body out of regret for not being there to offer her help and praying for her soul's safety. She was always an empathetic person, and the idea of this woman being hunted to death until she died in panic and fright made her angry. The cauldron in her heart boiling with righteous outrage before she clenched her fist and choked it down to a more manageable level.  
  
"Why would they bring them here? To hunt them for sport? That seems so, petty and cruel. Just..." He said before blinking and noticing he had some water in his eyes beneath his helmet. He wasn't a stranger to tears; he often cried even as much as Zurvduat always sought to make him stop. He didn't sob at least, but he felt almost ashamed of letting it fall anyway. Zurvduat always hated it when he cried, and his the thought of Zurvduat applying his usual methods to make him stop made him reflexively cringe.  
  
"...why would anyone be so heartless?" He said, sitting on one of the ledges of the platform behind him, nestling himself into a space and laying his hand on his helmet.  
  
"Let's look at her final logs first...maybe that will give us some answers." Samus said, pulling up the information and relaying it into their memories, a series of visions flashing in their mind's eye as if they were there themselves, sequestered in such a way to avoid any unwanted intermingling of identity.  
  
They saw the Federal Marines, a mechanized brigade, try to chase down a formation of Space Pirates in a firefight for a section of forest on a resource rich world. Just a single, smaller section of a much larger battle, but the trench lines that had been set up were ablaze with weapons fire. Her own unit had split off to infiltrate the pirate lines; opening fire on the mortars they had set up from an unexpected angle as they filtered into a hole in their defences.  
  
This action helped to cost the space pirates the battle, and they pursued the routing foe through the foliage until they found a portal of some sort opening up in front of the fleeing Confederates. The space pirates, seeing nothing to lose, poured in through the portal and forced the Federal troopers to give chase. The brigade lost track of the pirates shortly and tried to hunt them in the hallways. However, things would begin to go wrong sooner than later; the Sunstalker was soon hunting them down, picking them off at irregular intervals; utterly unstoppable. Not even the Diomar class heavy tanks could get the Sunstalker to flinch, nor was its defences any protection.  
  
It eventually raided their base camp directly, where they tried to throw everything they had against it...but what they did not expect was a second one. With horns that made a crescent shape over its head, midnight blue highlights and energy where its solar counterpart had yellow, and moonlight white armour, the new being gave an appearance of being based on the moon as opposed to the sun. No sooner had the new foe stepped forth from a wormhole and at once, most of the Federation soldiers screamed as they began to implode within their armour. They died twisted, horrible deaths as they were sucked away into singularities with no means of resisting, and panic soon overtook the surviving marines.  
  
She managed to run away in time, shame and fear carrying her far as she abandoned her fellow soldiers to their fate. All the while their screams never stopped ringing in her ears. She ran as fast as her augments and armour could carry her. Shame and fear made her go as far as she could until she found a room where she could progress no further; her armour unable to allow her to dive into the corrosive gas clouds long enough to make it. She passed by a statue bearing an upgrade, but as her armour lacked the modularity to incorporate it, all it was was an orb.  
  
Frustrated and tired, she made her way down the halls until she came close to where she died, finding herself too scared to head back but no way to head forward. She cried, wailed for someone to help her, and heard the sounds of distant gunfire and the howl of the Sunstalker. She felt an urge to try and investigate, but the keen of a circular ring gate opening made her freeze. She turned around and saw the Moonhunter emerging before opening another such gate, trying to reach through only to be rebuffed by its own portal. A low groan of frustration that she felt as much as heard echoed from the white monster, and she briefly forgot her fear.  
  
Then the Moonhunter turned towards her and it all came back at once. She tried to fight. She gave everything she had, it wasn't even a start on the path of being enough. She ran again, even through the clouds, hoping for the swift death of dissolving over the Moonhunter's hunt. But her shields stopped ticking down as they glowed with an unusual force, and she then saw a claw reaching for her through the fog and had enough time to let out a scream. It was not a pleasant death. And the memory cut off shortly after the first breach into the armour by the Moonhunter.  
  
Back in the present, Arne mulled over the implications. "There's two of them...can Spire and Armaud handle both of them?" He said, his mind going over possible scenarios, known information and capabilities. He kept on thinking and thinking about it until Samus straightened her posture and stood up.  
  
"We're going to help them do it. We'll just need to find the right gear first. Come on. We're not letting those two...things get away with this." She said, steely determination filling her voice as she balled her fists up. That hot sensation of anger was coming back to her, filling her up like soup and making her feel the veins beneath her skin pulse. Injustice didn't sit with her, and she wasn't going to let it go answered.  
  
"We'd need something to cancel out the gravity fields...some way of interfering with their teleportation, and weapons that can do some serious hurt to their shields. And if we can find them; something that can really hurt that armour. No sense in taking them on if we can't hurt them." Arne said, thinking about it and nodding supportively as they crossed out of the fog and through another room in the grand chamber.  
  
"You're...not going to tell me it's a bad idea?" Samus said, raising an eyebrow.  
  
"You said it yourself. Those things can't be allowed to prey on people. I'm sure they're behind the teleports somehow...might be an experiment by them to try and get off-world...or get to somewhere else important to them." He said, theorizing and letting his ideas rack themselves in his brain. He needed to understand them, why they were doing what they did. If he wanted to defeat them, he needed to grasp them.  
  
"Yes...the Moonhunter was stopped when it tried to open a portal. It must be trying to reach something it's not allowed to, maybe it was trying to find a weak point in whatever's jamming its teleports?" Samus said.  
  
"Yeah that would make sense...and I'm sure that they're the ones blocking communications. And we know they're why the animals are going wild. Not sure why domesticated animals are immune though, that's weird." He said as the two started to pick up their pace once again.  
  
"Well...I think we should try finding some answers to our question no? There has to be something about the Forbidden Wars here somewhere. We probably won't even have to detour from our path." She said, offering him a come hither gesture.  
  
"Come on Arne, let's do this." She said, anger and excitement blending together into a sort of impish anticipation that made her feel electric with eagerness to do some real heroic work in what was supposed to be a training mission.  
  
"I'm ready." He said with a nod. And with that the two ascended a series of platforms, rushing towards the next door; cutting through countless hostile drones in their way. It almost seemed unfair at times, but they drove themselves with an eagerness to learn.  
  
Old archives were stashed here, revealed to them by the map station they raided. Old archives for an old war with a few objects of interest to pick up along the way. A few attachments such as a wrist gun for the left arm and a bayonet projector for the cannon, shockwave emitters for the boots and alternate mode, a pair of retractable shoulder-mounted munitions launchers as well as corrosion-grenades for them, the spazer beam, the deadly screw attack, and their first power bombs. A number of energy tanks and other minor upgrades were of course also picked up along the way as they found their way to the archives. Though perhaps most unusual were some upgrades for the zero suit, durability augments, enhancements to their sidearms, a few extra functions here and there. Nothing they hoped they'd need to use anytime soon, but useful.  
  
Off the beaten path, the archives were a menagerie of differing architectural styles as they provided centralized access to the collected stores of knowledge of countless civilizations gathered throughout millions of years. Much of the recorded history here was older than the very first hominid, some of it comparable in age to the dinosaurs or even older. But they were looking for something perhaps a bit newer than that. They tried to maintain their focus, even as they tried to contain their excitement at being presented with so much information.  
  
"Wow...I could get lost in here forever..." Samus whistled out, her young brain filled with so many possibilities. She warmed inside at the thought of understanding even a fraction of the information stored here, and briefly lost herself in dreams of curling up with endless tomes of knowledge before snapping back to her task at hand. Her armour analyzed the organization system of the archives while Arne briefly stopped when he noticed a text written by Elmorni amongst the datafiles his armour was perusing.  
  
"Observations on the indigenous population of Planet..." He said, pursing his lips beneath his helmet as the armour A.I translated the data. "Earth?" He blinked. He never knew that about his caretaker, but there she was in the files; observing Roman legionaries from a distance. He'd have to ask her about that when he got back to her, but he noticed Samus had already started to wander off. Scrambling, he caught up to her as she ran her hand along the side of one of the archive mainframes.  
  
"Find anything?" He asked, slowing himself down once he was walking beside her again.  
  
"Here we go." She said, snapping her gauntleted finger as if her hand were utterly bare as she extracted the information. "Records of the Celestial War." She mused as she dug into the data. It was rather vague, but there was enough there for her to piece some of it together, including a name she recognized as taboo. It was a name given to storybook monsters who had never been given the honour of an appellation in all the old tales she listened to as a small child; Krazimak. The old enemy, a foe whom the Commonwealth developed the greatest war machine ever seen to best. They who had been expelled to beyond the firmament for their wars of aggression and pacts with dark things from the vast unplace at the hour of their final defeat. The banishment though was supposed to have caught their entire civilization and all their allies who refused terms though. A fact that left her with the question as to how two got here.  
  
"The pocket universe they're stuck in is supposed to be unbreachable. Nothing gets in or out. Must be two stragglers then...they don't seem like they could be true warriors. Definitely not with that much time to advance." She said, taking a moment to put her armoured chin in her fingers as she paused for a moment to think.  
  
"Then they might be trying to find a way to break open the seal somewhat. Though they'd need way more than what this planet can offer if they want to make any sizeable breach...if it's even possible at all honestly." He said, then shaking his head. "I don't really get it though, the old foe would have probably wiped themselves out if they were trapped in there all that time...why bother trying to go back?"  
  
"A hundred and fourteen thousand years is a very long time to get homesick. They're probably desperate, that might have given them hope. But if that's the case...then we'll have to put them down. Even if you're right, and I think you are, it's too risky to gamble with something like this." She said, coming to her decision decisively and swiftly in a way that left Arne almost breathless.  
  
"I think that sounds like a good plan, we'll just need to gather what we can to even the odds. Then I think we should cut their communications jamming. If we can link up with Spire and Armaud once we're ready...we can really do this." He said, bringing up a map of the facility and having his suit try to analyze any sources of signal distortion and coming up with a likely location.  
  
"Great thinking! Then if we can get control of the planet's defence systems too...we could totally clean them out no problem!" She said, beaming brightly beneath her helmet.  
  
"I mean...I wouldn't say no problem; there's probably going to be problems. But yeah, good plan I'd say." He gave her a thumbs up that she reciprocated before they made one of their arm locks and headbutts of affection as they decided to redirect course; pulling whatever information that caught their interest all the while. Of course, this meant about as much of it as they could get their scan visors to analyze.  
  
Once they had everything they wanted, they made a course towards something quite important on their journey, going through another elevator to take them to the region of Azimil. There they were met with a great deal of water and pools. Aquatic life forms swam freely through this water, sharing it with drones designed to function in an environment which their armour; while able to traverse, was slowed down by. The sensation of speed was replaced with the frustration of drag and pushing through the weight of liquid and fluid; something they could manage with decent velocity but ever an annoyance. The howl of the stalkers unfortunately forced them to have to deal with some of the majestic wildlife. Perhaps the one they felt the most broken up about having to engage were the powerful but beautiful sailbacked and ray like elagons who sought mostly to feed off of plankton but proved viciously aggressive once provoked by the hunting call.  
  
This sort of activity dragged on their attempt to blitz through the area as quickly as possible. The rush they got from accomplishing everything as fast as they could had faded into memory and the deliberation of making sure they were moving in the right way lest they waste time with more traversing through water grew like an annoying mosquito bite. For the often impatient Samus in particular, the constant sensation of being forced to slow down and hold back grated on her, while Arne kept on feeling as if he was being judged by someone for every second of wasted time.  
  
Every time they were able to surface into a section of drier land was one where they felt relieved as the world seemed to no longer be in slow motion.  
  
"Ugh...I sometimes feel like I'd be faster swimming unsuited." Samus groaned as she emerged from the water while they oriented themselves. She didn't bother shake drying her armour and took a sip of the nutrient feed that her armour provided when she indicated she wanted something in her system. After that, she dismissed her armour altogether and undid the face cover of her zero suit. Blue and white with harder plates to offer additional protection to vital areas and designed to evoke musculature, the zero suit felt like wearing nothing but the air, but she didn't really mind. She sighed and stretched herself while Arne was already trying to scout ahead.  
  
"Not going to take a break there Arne?" She asked, causing him to stop in his tracks and turn around while he nodded and dismissed his own armour in turn.  
  
"Something the matter?" He asked, approaching her as she patted his silver hair and gave a cheeky grin.  
  
"Mmmh...nothing really, just wanted to talk face to face with my boyfriend for a bit. Since we are doing this whole quest pretty ad hoc no?" She said, laying her fingers on his chin and turning his head towards her. His pale cheeks turned a quite brilliant red akin to his eyes as he averted his gaze.  
  
"Well uh...what do you want to talk about, Sammy?" He said, the pet name making her flush herself as she gave him a gentle punch in the arm that elicited a mock "ow" from him.  
  
"What do you want to do when we finish up? You haven't forgotten my offer have you?" She said, blue eyes looking at him expectantly as he stammered.  
  
"What...miss a night watching shows with you? No way!" He said as she smiled and pulled him into a hug that he quickly returned, a peck of the lips shared shortly afterwards.  
  
"Well I'm glad, just remember...I don't care what Zurvduat says, he can't come. I hate seeing him and I'm not having him spoil our fun." She said, rather enjoying how warm he felt as she refused to break from the embrace.  
  
"Hahah...that's a bit of a long term worry right now isn't it?" he said awkwardly. "Gotta clear out the problem in this facility first right? I mean...probably return to our suits as fast as possible. We're going to need them shortly." He said as she nodded.  
  
"Yeah...we shouldn't be too far away anyway. The map said up ahead should just be an obstacle challenge room. It's going to suck doing it through the water, but once we're through the gravity anomaly should be on the other side." She said, peeling from the hug with a bit of a skip as she resummoned her suit and helmet, letting Arne follow suit and lead the way.  
  
"I'll take point this time." He said as the two looked at the borderline maze of challenges to go through both with and without water and even gravitational distorts and felt an immediate sense of dread. Samus even let out a groan of preemptive frustration and almost sulked towards the obstacle course.  
  
Braving a series of gruelling tasks, they had just about cut their way through a swarm of drones guarding a statue of a bipedal moth-like creature. In its hands was an upgrade that emitted powerful gravitational radiation and plunged themselves into the water to acquire it; letting it merge with their suits and infuse it with a rush of energy as their backs began to glow. The thrusters upon them were augmented with a flight pack that went high enough to cover the backs of their heads, smooth and rounded in a shape somewhat like half of a pelvis. The water that had once provided them with so much resistance all at once felt like it didn't exist. This they found, was the Gravity Boost. But they would not just be allowed to claim it.  
  
The hunting howl of the moonhunter resounded through the water and a serpentine beast with a mouth full of fangs and a head like a dragon's crawled through, finned limbs stroking through the water as the grey-furred monster seemed to stretch on forever in the massive obstacle course room. Arne, fond of prehistoric earth fauna; found his mind making a comparison to a basilosaurus with a bit of the traits of an otter and perhaps a narwhal, given the long tusk that extended from the nose of the monster. Samus for her part, took a good look at the creature as its body seemed to go for hundreds of meters and just grinned beneath her helmet as the scan visor identified it as the Goradon.  
  
"Think we can take it out without killing it?" Arne asked.  
  
"Definitely." She said enthusiastically as its roar made the entirety of the room and more shake like an earthquake was going on, the two of them immediately assuming their fighting positions in response.

The Goradon's sinuous body stretched on for long enough that the parts of its body farther away from the pair faded into the blue of the water; a partially hidden colossus who could have swallowed a whale whole with its mouth. The obstacle course folded away, and the room shifted as it expanded to give the colossal Goradon all the space it needed. The battlespace went from just barely large enough to fit the goradon's frigate sized body to more than enough to give it all the room to move around it needed. Floating platforms rose up and then started to drift in chaotic patterns. The floor lowered, letting the water below sluice through until it was deep enough for the leviathan to manoeuvre comfortably and the light of the surface could no longer be seen in the pitch dark of abyssal depths. But they could still fight, the pressure not bothering them at all while their superhuman eyes and low-light visors served to illuminate the field of battle.  
  
Their scan visors reported that the creature's sensitive ears were its weakest point, with a sonic attack against these organs being the recommended course of action. It also informed them that the beast was deadset on the pair despite their enormous difference in size. Fortunately, the scan also suggested that the berserk state it was in could be undone, should they be able to sufficiently disrupt the lingering harmonic fields within its ears.  
  
"+We can save it...+" Samus said over the commlinks with Arne as her eyes widened with realisation, getting a nod out of him.  
  
"+We just need to interfere with the energy still reverberating through it, and we should be able to break the berserk state. Then once we've got the data w-+" He said before she finished his sentence for him.  
  
"+We can tune the seismic beam to it and use that to nonlethally subdue the berserk wildlife. And the Goradon should be tough enough for it to handle the process until we get it just right.+" She said. Something like this was worth fighting for over merely trying to find a way out as soon as possible. It was a chance to not only save the Goradon itself but save every other creature from the mad spell of the Sunstalker and Moonhunter.  
  
"+That'll take plenty of punch out of the hands of the two. We'll just need to get in well...uh, earshot.+" He said, feeling slightly embarrassed at the unavoidable pun.  
  
"+Don't worry, we'll be able to manage. We have to if we want to subdue this poor thing.+" She said, clenching her fist and focusing her mind. Of course, getting there would be a challenge in its own right in the face of the creature's sheer size and power. A power that it demonstrated with a click and an undulation of its throat that created a massive ripple of incoming pressure waves in the water. A sonic pulse to split the earth asunder and shake the seas.  
  
Arne and Samus split off, Arne firing his new boosters to get over the sound wave before it could reach him, Samus dashing in the opposite direction and firing off her speed booster, cackling at the sensation of being under its power once again.  
  
With the pulse avoided, Arne flanked it from the side and charged up a shot from his cannon. The seismic beam blast lanced from his weapon, stacked with several other beams to allow it to detonate, fire nine projectiles at once in a tight buckshot pattern, pierce through obstacles, and strike with considerably more power than was usual. And this impact was particularly more potent when combined with his max-charge and striking power upgrades. The strike made the creature's head lurch to the side, the behemoth's vast body unbraced for such a collision and its ears ringing from the impact.  
  
Just the opening Samus needed as she launched herself in a shinespark tackle that struck the Goradon's body in the chest. The beast's quintessence field kept it alive, resisting the shinespark's efforts to bore right through its body, but it could not stop the impact as it bowled over the kaiju sized animal; flipping through the water before righting itself.  
  
It swept its tail around at speeds high enough to make the water supercavitate, a foam of bubbles and a bow wave of parting water surrounding the lashing appendage as the creature spun itself around. The water around them swirled into a brief whirlpool, churned into furious motion as it moved around. The pair's retaliation in the form of a barrage of missile impacts was shrugged off, willing itself not to be budged by them before the supercavitation shockwave slammed the pair.  
  
They were flung through the water and took considerable damage from a movement that displaced the water in the lake sized chamber all at once, sloshing it into a great wave while they righted themselves, a third of an energy tank lower than they once were. Indeed, a mighty blow; given that they felt only a single percentage of it. But the beast was not done yet, whipping its body into motion fast enough to supercavitate, intending to skewer them with its mighty tusk or crush them beneath its mass.  
  
"+Samus, try and see if we can get it stuck.+" Arne said, counting the fractions of a second before impact. He already had his idea of how this was going to work formed in his head. He just needed to wait until the Goradon was fully committed to its movement, its looming shape growing ever larger in their vision. Soon could he could just about smell the creature, and saw every imperfection in its house-sized teeth and could count its billions of hairs.  
  
"+Now Arne!+" Samus shouted, each of them firing off their blink packs to leave the Goradon with nothing to impact but the floor of the chamber's floor. A shockwave rippled outwards, lashing over the feature heavy floor while Arne and Samus materialised to the sides of its head as it thrashed its body, trying to get its hands to touch the ground while straining its neck muscles backwards. Anger and frustration could be felt roiling off of its massive body, its glowing green eyes a mask of fury and offence at having been trapped in such a manner. And that fury turned to writhing pain at the sensation of its ears being assaulted with sonic and concussive weapons. Its body tensed with each shot, a low groan rumbling across the water before it finally pulled itself free.  
  
The monster shook and shuddered, and roared as it sought to get another pass on the two, snapping its head forward to catch them in its jaws. Seeing it approaching Arne, Samus latched onto the side of its head with her grapple beam and tugged the thing's head to the other side violently, grunting as she wrestled with its enormous muscles and planting her heels. The contest between her own musculature and her armour's strength and the creature's millions of tonnes of quintessence fueled flesh lasted only a few moments from her perspective until the surprised animal found itself redirected just enough that its exposed ear was struck again by Arne. It hated the sensation, but its eyes seemed to clear somewhat with that impact.  
  
"+Ahah! I think I'm getting close! Just need to fine-tune a bit.+" Arne said, letting the left hand's wrist blaster let loose with a continual beam pulse that clearly aggravated the leviathan. Samus added her own fire to the mix, the two making the kaiju undulate in discomfort and feeling terrible every step of the way as its cries made their hearts sink. Samus could only hope to find what she was looking for quickly in the hopes of releasing the animal from its spell, but all at once her bones felt alive with electric anticipation.  
  
"+Incoming!+" She shouted, engaging her teleport to find cover as the monster, clicked its jaw and then snapped it at speeds so great as to create a white flash of heat from its grinding teeth as it released a sound burst in all directions. A bubble expanded with a skin as hot as a star, like a pistol shrimp's snap magnified to a scale that could be the ruin of old earth nations. The beast floundered in the vacuum pocket it had created briefly before the bubble finally collapsed, and the whole of the watery arena churned to the point of starting to steam until anti-energy was released to cool the fluid. Arne was not lucky enough to dodge it, having gotten too focused in trying to find the right frequency. He had enough cognisance to recognise that Samus had shouted "+ARNE!+" over the comms just before he took the impact head-on.  
  
An entire energy tank depleted instantly before his impact with the wall depleted a second, his body splayed out from the impact and his head swimming briefly from the impact. But he recovered himself, gasping briefly for breath before getting his bearings once again. His vision straightened and his mind cleared and he found himself being bullrushed by the creature. He stopped himself and braced for impact, reaching out a hand and blocking its motion. He felt his body strain from the impact, he felt his boots dragging across the ground and he saw another energy tank start to tick downwards. But he did not relent. He raised a leg, took a step forward and held position.  
  
He felt his legs fight to stay rigid, his body seemed to be of steel as he refused to give any slack. Each movement had to be fought over but he persevered even as a second energy tank emptied. He felt something wet in his nose very much unlike the usual mucus that had a coppery taste in his mouth as he heard a power missile strike the behemoth in the side, bringing the frigate sized beast to a sudden halt as it snarled in displeasure. Now, he finally broke free and redirected its remaining momentum into the ground, teleporting aside as it impaled itself into the floor once again.  
  
Already, Samus had been taking advantage of its distraction, filling its ears with shifting frequencies. "+Are you alright Arne? You've taken some pretty hard hits.+" She asked as he got onto another side of the leviathan and struck at its ears. Worry was in her voice, and he felt guilty for letting himself be in a position where she'd have to worry about him instead of being able to handle himself. A punch to the gut as sure as taking that bubble blast.  
  
"+I'll be fine, Samus. I've had worse.+" He said as he sighed. Only a half-truth and both of them knew it. He had worse yes, but his voice was shaky with discontent at having shown weakness. He made a mistake, and he was cursing himself for it. Already he could imagine Zurvduat's criticisms, already he felt like he was letting his birth parents down. They could have handled this if they had the same kind of means he did. What was he then if he couldn't be better despite everything he was given?  
  
"+Arne. You're not okay, stop pretending you are and let me help you! You can do this! You made a misstep that's all. Just focus on the harmonics and we'll be in the clear!+" Samus said as the titan started to thrash once again, digging its hands into the floor and trying to push back. However, its eyes were increasingly less filled with malice even as it struggled against the sound filling its ears. But right now, her concerns were elsewhere, she could sense the disquiet in his head, she could feel the frustration in his heart. And that frustration soon echoed inside of her, why couldn't she help him?  
  
"+I...I can't do this right now Samus! I need to...I've almost got the frequency.+" He said, trying to purge his mind of the sense of frustration and unquiet that was wracking around inside of it. He needed to focus, he had to make this right. Checking the mental math he was doing against what his armour computer had come up with, he relayed the information to Samus and the two came to something that finally matched the chaotic, physics-defying frequency. At last he felt a bit of triumph as the armour reported to him with those magical words. "Frequency neutralised". All at once the animal stopped trying to catch them with its limbs and instead pulled itself out. It glowered at them, knowing they had caused it pain, but it seemed understanding, contemplating them briefly before exhaling to calm down and swimming away.  
  
"+We did it!+" Arne said, briefly smiling to himself before Samus stormed up to him and grabbed him by the collar, shooting the both of them out of the water with their gravity boosters. They breached outwards like cannonballs and landed atop a platform as she turned her head towards him and let her visor opacity decrease to give him a good view of her eyes. She wasn't happy. She was scowling even. He adored her, but her anger sparked a bit of primordial fear in him, even as he felt guilty for upsetting her.  
  
"Arne! Listen to me. You need to get Zurvduat out of your head for once!" She said, pulling off her helmet and tossing it on the ground as she glared at him. "Take that thing off now; we need to talk." She said, tapping on his helmet and getting his almost immediate compliance. He inhaled once again, the freshwater air filling his nostrils as he allowed it to permeate through his armour and zero suit shielding.  
  
"You know I don't have the same kind of...family you do. People who stand up for you, who kiss you goodnight and brush away your tears. I can't jus-" He started before Samus laid her hand on his cheek and thumbed over the skin just below his right eye. The metal on her gauntlet was warm to the touch, softer than expected, and glistening with wetness fresher than the water. He had been tearing again.  
  
"Arne, when we finish this you'll be free to leave him behind. He's not the only one judging you, and if he's going to try and keep you over taking a few hits here and there in this maze, then he doesn't deserve you as a son." She said calmly, shushing him as he started to relax his guard and allow himself to sob a bit from the stress of worrying about his father's approval. "And you do have a good family. You've got people like Elmorni to look out for you, and not all of the Alimbics are out to whip you into shape as Zurvduat does." She said.  
  
"...I...I know...but almost everyone on Zebes loves you and I just...why don't I have that? The worst you've got is Mother Brain and you just...ignore her. I...I want something like that." He said, shuddering a bit as he slumped a bit forwards onto her.  
  
"Mother Brain is...stupid. Smart, but stupid. She doesn't understand me. She never wanted me. So why care about what she has to say? Besides...not all the Chozo are as sweet as Old Bird. Some of them don't see Mother Brain the way I do, and..." She said before realising she had opened her own defences up as Arne nodded.  
  
"You're scared that Mother Brain is planning something, but you don't know how to convince them. Especially when she's supposed to know everything but...well...here we are trying to stop something that isn't supposed to exist anymore." He said, sniffling a bit as he attempted to collect himself, resting a hand on the one she offered him.  
  
"...Yeah. She's supposed to be everywhere, monitoring everything. How didn't she know about this?" She said, looking down before meeting his gaze again.  
  
"Look...I don't know how to talk to her, but I think the ones on her side believe you're...biased I guess? You've never liked her. Maybe try making a bit of an effort to understand her? You're honestly probably right to worry, but just...start making preparations." He said, getting a nod out of her.  
  
"You're right. I just...find it so frustrating that I can't be rid of her and when I see you and Zurvduat I think...it's everything I'm scared of happening to people like us. When I look at Zurvduat, I see Mother Brain...not Old Bird, and that scares me, Arne." She said, sitting him down onto a crate and following suit.  
  
"I want people to be safe and happy to be able to do things that make them happy. I don't want people like you to cry...I hate feeling like there's nothing I can do. Please, Arne, I want to feel like I can do something." She said, finding his arm on her shoulder and a pat on it as she closed her eyes and blinked a loose tear or so.  
  
"I...well, we're doing something now, aren't we. Two of us, sitting here, talking things out. You're more patient than you think you are Samus. You put up with everything pretty well and well...I think you're going to do great when you get out there. And then people will see what I see." He said, sniffling again as he looked gently on her.  
  
"I mean, I don't think everyone's going to see me exactly the way you do. Especially with the stuff you've um...seen." She said with a red flush. "It is a bit...special even if I'd like other people to see me that way too. I just hope I don't scare them away when I get mad." She said with a little giggle and getting a blush out of him.  
  
"Ahah that'd be a bit, really, super-awkward. Let's uh, ah, ahem. Other people would be nice but uhhh." He cleared his throat and tried his best not to do his an impression of a beet root. "Okay, starting over. With the anger thing. Well, the way I see it, you just get mad about stuff people should be mad about. It's not really a bad thing. It just means you care."  
  
"Your mother said that in one of her books. That being outraged means you care." She said with a smile.  
  
"She was...really smart about that kind of thing." He said, returning the smile.  
  
"But I think you should pay a bit more attention to what she wrote about valuing yourself Arne. You're not a disappointment or whatever Zurvduat says...you're the guy who's going to kick Krazimak butt with me, Spire, and Armaud. Then let's see Zurvduat try to keep you down." She said, starting to grin.  
  
"Hahah...yeah. I guess I am! But on that note, Samus...please, never think you can't help. Just, sitting here and talking this out with me was a big help. And I don't want you to think you're helpless." He said, giving her a hug before the two shared another kiss, deeper than last time before duty called to them to break it up once again.  
  
"Love you." She said. The words had been shared between them like secret notes for almost a year now. Now they felt so much heavier than ever before. A moment born of concerned anger strengthened those words, made them feel almost divine. Being near him made her feel like she was understood, that she wasn't alone. That someone could listen to her and know what she felt the way only a peer could. He gave her a sense that not only could she realize her dreams, she would be able to count on other people to make them real.  
  
"Love you too." He replied. He meant it. She gave him a sense that he was valued, that he was someone who mattered and was more than just what others told him to be. She made him optimistic, that things were going to go alright and he could live up to the expectations set for him.  
  
The moment that seemed to last forever, the warmth in their chests stretching that iota of time out until seconds felt like hours came to an end though as they recollected their helmets.  
  
"We should probably get going, we're gonna need to collect a few things and disable that signal. Come on, Spire's probably got another navigation thing set up." Arne said, stretching as he reared up to his full height.  
  
"Let's not keep them waiting then." She said, confident as they started to move at full speed once again.

* * *

**Consolidated Logbook Entries**

Diamont Logs: Craftsman's Honour  
  
We are proud of our work that has chiselled old stone into the finest gems. Our hands have forged for aeons in peace and war, and we look on our achievements with glad hearts. The splendour of Mondreus and the other gem worlds can be shared with all, and it is only natural that we seek to gift to Zoran some of the beauty that we hope to build throughout the cosmos until all may live in the glory that we all deserve for our labours. We who have built these works that you now look upon now only ask of you to reflect on our artifice and appreciate the effort that went into our craft.  
  
 _Samus' Notes:_  
It's a bit odd to find this next to a destroyed statue I'll admit.  
  
 _Arne's Notes:_  
I suppose I am something of a traveller from an antique land.

  
  
Mechanoids: Diamont: Utility: Nuisance: Skradal  
  
The Skradal drone is an almost ubiquitous example of multipurpose Diamont Drone technology that was developed to make life simpler. Designed for handling nearly all menial tasks from cleaning to mining to most forms of routine maintenance and repair work, Skradal Drones are present on virtually all worlds that once had a Diamont presence. With the disappearance of the Diamonts, the Skradals have largely continued to follow their last orders and any other tasks that their synthetic consciousnesses determine are necessary. Skradal drones are extremely resilient to heat but do not handle cryogenic stresses particularly well.  
  
 _Samus' Notes:_  
Thinking about it, is the Diamonts being known as a culture of artists because the Diamonts were particularly creative? Or is it just because they had a lot of free time because they had robots do most of the work?  
  
 _Arne's Notes:_  
My parents always wrote about how it made no sense to have so many people working for a wage when all the technology for everyone to have all the free time they want. Especially when people in the ODOCR already live like that. I guess the Diamonts thought the same way they did.

  
Species: Fauna: Metallic: Molluscoid: Cephalopodoid: Octopoid: Large: Debatably Sapient: Omnivorous: Non-Hostile: Magrakal  
  
The Magrakal species originates from the molten world of Agramat and has been found to be able to spread far and wide by its young stowing away on the craft of thermophilic species. A common and particularly intelligent animal often regarded as a pest to an outright menace, the Magrakal can fill a large number of niches due to its omnivorous diet and adaptable body plan. Semi-aquatic ambush predation, active pursuit hunting, fully aquatic camouflage ambushes, and filter-feeding all serve substantial roles in ensuring that Magrakals have sufficient food intake for their caloric needs. Magrakals are vulnerable to low temperatures and will begin to die in temperatures below the melting point of glass.  
  
 _Samus' Notes:_  
Hrm...I think I've got an idea for the fabricator now. Something nice and plush and squid shaped.  
  
 _Arne's Notes:_  
Having been inside Spire's ship I'm curious as to just which part of those ships their young stow away in?

  
  
Species: Fauna: Silicoid: Tripod: Legolramik: Stragim: Ralag: Non-Sapient: Omnivorous: Non-Hostile: Magistrider  
  
Magistriders are large and generally unaggressive animals native to Zorant that use their immensely long legs to stride well above the surface of molten materials to make their prey think they are much smaller than they are as well as to reach special foliage that only grows at specific heights. Upon the detection of prey through the sensory organs, Magistriders will quickly plunge stabbing limbs into the molten pools to skewer their victims and pull them up towards their mouthparts for consumption. As might be expected from the gracility of their limbs, Magistriders are vulnerable to limb damage and will typically topple over if one leg is lost.  
  
 _Samus' Notes:_  
It's awful to see these animals just mutilated as collateral damage. At least they didn't die in too much pain.  
  
 _Arne's Notes:_  
It's...pretty disturbing to see so many dead Magistriders when they're some of the least hostile animals of that size I know.

  
  
Species: Fauna: Living Metal: Diapsidoid: Archosauriform: Crocodilloform: Suchidomorph: Non-Sapient: Carnivorous: Hostile: Olgromak  
  
The Olgromak is a creature indigenous to the molten planet of Harandl that is rarely found outside of environments hot enough to melt most conventional metals. The extremophilic organism occupies a semi-aquatic ambush predator niche much akin to the Crocodiles of Earth, lurking near the shoreline and seeking to pull prey into the molten material to drown them and pull them apart. Well armoured and tremendously strong, Olgromaks are often among the most dangerous predators in the biomes they inhabit. However, like most extremophilic metallic organisms; they do not respond well to cryogenic weapons which can induce severe temperature shock in their tissue.  
  
 _Samus' Notes:_  
I'm hoping I haven't caused any permanent damage by using my cryogenic weapons, but if not, I'm praying that the facility's drones can take care of them.  
  
 _Arne's Notes:_  
I'm really curious as to what exactly goes into the berserker signal that makes wild animals so aggressive...it's...weird to see them crawl out of their preferred environment to fight us in ours.

  
  
Species: Fauna: Silicoid: Molluscoid: Cephalopodoid: Pseudo-Squid: Titan class organism: Debatably Sapient: Omnivorous: Hostile: Azagal  
  
The Azagal is a species of Titan class organisms native to the Diamont homeworld of Mondreus typically dwelled within the planet's mantle and outer core. While initially starting life as fry the size of a human's thumbnail, Azagals can grow in size seemingly without limit so long as they avoid death; their physiologies continually changing to accommodate their greater bulk. While typically remaining in these superheated areas, Azagals sometimes approach the surface to acquire minerals found less common in the inner regions of the planets they reside in. Azagals are incredibly durable and robust and can make use of the quintessence within them to project ultra-high temperature attacks from the crystal formations in their tentacles. Like most organisms native to extremely high temperatures; however, rapid decreases in temperature will usually prove exceedingly dangerous to their tissue.  
  
 _Samus' Notes:_  
Spire really liked to tell stories about Mondreus and the kind of animals that live there. I wonder if he's met this particular Azagal now actually?  
  
 _Arne's Notes:_  
Man am I hoping that the Azagal isn't going to miss that tentacle. That must have been hundreds of thousands of tons worth of flesh to regenerate later.

  
  
Upgrades: Sub-Weapons: Projectile: Diamont originated: Autoflak  
  
The Autoflak is a somewhat crude but effective weapon that launches hypervelocity fragmentation projectiles that will explode into a shower of subatomically sharp shards; dealing severe damage to any target caught in the blast radius. Capable of sustained rapid-fire, the Autoflak is incredibly deadly against large numbers of soft targets or targets that rely on agility rather than durability for their survivability. The autoflak can be charged to fire a cluster shell that will launch submunitions in addition to the initial wave of shards; annihilating most soft targets in reach.  
  
 _Samus' Notes:_  
Diamont Weapons are pretty straightforward but hugely fun to use. The Autoflak's proven to be incredible against swarming enemies so far.  
  
 _Arne's Notes:_  
I'm more familiar with reverse-engineered versions made by later societies, but every time I've seen Spire use one of these, he's put it to good use.

  
  
Upgrades: Beams: Sonic: Diamont originated: Seismic Beam  
  
The Seismic Beam is a sonic weapon that releases a burst of air in front of it, generating it from the armour's zero point systems and then having it trailed by a powerful vibrational frequency. The more that the beam hits a target, the more it will resonate with the target, increasing the damage with each following hit until the target is destroyed or until the resonance stops. The beam will also traverse through multiple targets and can ignore many forms of cover. Its charged form is known as the Seismoquake and causes the afflicted target to resonate violently, echoing outwards and damaging all nearby enemies.  
  
 _Samus' Notes:_  
What I've found is that the Seismoquake can be extended by firing onto the resonating target. Usually, the target will be destroyed before you can get too crazy with the amplification, but it makes the Seismic Beam great at clearing out mobs.  
  
 _Arne's Notes:_  
The Seismic Beam's been a dream at dealing with tunnelling enemies, collapsing the tunnels on top of them is worth it. There's a bit of a delay though, maybe I could rig it to use a denser medium? Something I'll need to think about later.

  
  
Upgrades: Sub-Weapons: Projectile: Diamont Created: Magnum Cannon  
  
The Magnum Cannon serves as a powerful sniper weapon and anti-materiel tool for the user. Accelerating a projectile to near light speed, the Magnum Cannon's projectiles are capable of penetrating through multiple targets at a time and can shear their way through most armour and shielding thanks to the disruption effect of the projectile. While light progenitor grade shielding remains effective, the Magnum Cannon will be more than sufficient against most modern technology. The charge shot will fire a MIRV projectile that will split into submunitions, damaging up to three lines worth of targets.  
  
 _Samus' Notes:_  
Getting used to aiming the MIRV for maximum effect's going to take just a bit of getting used to, but I think once I properly use my distant sight to do it I'll be lining up group shots like nothing.  
  
 _Arne's Notes:_  
It's not quite as precise as the Imperialist but quite a lot punchier. I'd call it more of an anti-materiel weapon than a sniper, but I can use it like that in a pinch.

  
  
Upgrades: Charge Combo: Projectile: Chozo Created: Power Missile  
  
Fusing the power of an overcharged power beam shot and five missiles which may be swapped in for super missiles and/or charged and/or elemental missiles, the power missile impacts with tremendous kinetic energy before releasing a power burst. The energy is "neutral" with regards to most resistances and can afflict entities usually immune to elemental forms of damage such as many forms of spirits. The projectile will retain its full homing capabilities and bears a significantly increased area of effect compared to the standard missile.  
  
 _Samus' Notes:_  
Pretty basic as far as combos go, it just shoots a more powerful missile. Definitely might have use in clearing some obstacles and locks though.  
  
 _Arne's Notes:_  
It's very bog-standard, but honestly, it just works? Nothing really more to say about it.

  
  
Upgrades: Elemental Warheads: Explosives: Multiple-Origin  
  
Elemental warheads such as Toxin grenades, Ice Bombs, Pyro-Missiles and similar devices augment your existing explosive arsenal by offering them increased damaging effect as well as the capacity to deliver elemental effects. The user may swap between or combine compatible effects as deemed necessary to create differing types of warheads as the situation demands. Elemental warheads may be applied to superlative but more ammunition intensive munitions such as super-missiles, power bombs, and ultra grenades.  
  
 _Samus' Notes:_  
More versatility is always welcome. I'll try out some of the elemental combinations as soon as I can get the chance.  
  
 _Arne's Notes:_  
Ugh, I've got so many ideas on how to tinker with the missiles for better effect but no time to sit down and work on them right now.

  
  
Upgrades: Grapple Beam: Offensive/Utility: Grapple Voltage  
  
The grapple voltage adds the ability for the user to transmit or drain energy through the grapple beam. Transmission of energy may be used to charge targets or overload them while the drain function may be used to bolster the user's suit functions or replenish shielding as the need arises. The grapple voltage may also be utilized for medicinal purposes, converting suit energy into bioforce able to regenerate injuries.  
  
 _Samus' Notes:_  
I think I'll be getting a lot of use out of the bioforce transfer. I just wish I had more tools to heal as well as hurt?  
  
 _Arne's Notes:_  
From my notes in combat, the send function seems to work a lot faster than the receive function.

  
  
Mechanoids: Chozo: Warrior Testing: Combat Capable: Torizo  
  
Build in the stylized visage of traditional Chozo statuary, Torizos serve similar functions to standard statues until the item they guard is collected, or some other predetermined trigger is set off. Upon this eventuality, the Torizo activates and reveals itself to be a combat test. Torizo models come in many degrees of strength and combat capability, but all share the tendency to shift in colour towards purple as they take damage to give the warrior a clear idea of their progress. The weakest Torizos start the battles they fight already in their purple state while stronger ones typically have other colour schemes. This particular model of Torizo is a green Torizo and will augment its ability to fire claw produced energy crescents, anti-energy ocular bolts, and clap generated shockwaves with the capacity to vent quintessence plasma at nearby targets orally.  
  
 _Samus' Notes:_  
Torizos are largely bog-standard to fight, but they can be quite tricky since they're a lot faster than they look. Pinning them down to one place usually makes things go faster as long as you can keep them from jumping out of your suppressive fire.  
  
 _Arne's Notes:_  
The deception seems to only really work if you already associate Chozo statues with places of safety. And honestly, a Chozo statue standing in the middle of what's clearly an arena is probably not entirely benign.

  
  
Upgrades: Armour: Physical modification: Chemical Defenses: Multiple Makers: Desolation Suit  
  
The Desolation suit was designed with ensuring the user's ability to traverse through chemical obstacles and deal with chemically derived attacks. Created initially with hypercorrosive agents such as Fuel Gel in mind, the Desolation Suit has come to offer a wide array of protections against all manner of toxic agents. In addition to rendering the user immune to nearly all hostile corrosive agents, the Desolation suit offers a wide array of overall improvements to the armour's functions, including to shield resilience, plating durability, regenerative capacity and physical augmentation. In addition, modifications to the visor allow for somewhat clearer sight in heavily polluted environments.  
  
 _Samus' Notes:_  
Honestly there's not a whole lot to say about it, though I'm not entirely sure that the colour scheme looks all that good with my armour. That being said, it's going to be handy when I have to deal with Fuel Gel.  
  
 _Arne's Notes:_  
There's something to be said for the ability to go through most toxic environments without any trouble. Still, I'm surprised by how little these Chozo upgrades alter the appearance of the armour.

  
  
Individuals: Human: Galactic Federation: Female: Military: Marine Corps: Deceased: Non-Commissioned Officers: Melinda Graves  
  
Born on the starship GFNSS Endeavour to military parents on a long deployment, Melinda Graves knew nothing but the marine corps for her entire life. Educated in the Guilliman military academy and enrolled in its cadet program, she immediately signed for a majority competence exam to fast track her career into the Marine Corps' ranks. Serving with the 389,841st Spelzar "Bows of Apollo" Mechanized Brigade, Melinda rose to the rank of Sergeant, serving multiple tours of duty in the Andromeda galaxy in active combat assignments against deep penetration raids by hostile entities such as the Confederacy of Dismor. With the currently revealed evidence, it is apparent that Melinda and the 389,841st were wiped out entirely by the Sunstalker and Moonhunter. With her suit's stock of nonreplenishable munitions emptied and her armour computers having registered continual weapon discharges, any claims of cowardice on her part are faulty. Her retreat was initiated by a lack of means to continue fighting. She is survived by her parents Laura Graves and Ivan Borisovich Orlokov and half-sister Sasha Ivanovich Orlokov.  
  
 _Samus' Notes:_  
I'll tell papa that there's going to be a message we'll need to deliver. Hopefully, we'll be able to deliver her remains to her family too.  
  
 _Arne's Notes:_  
She fought bravely as my mother did. Certainly not for cowardly causes like the outfit that attacked Cylosis. Rest well.

  
  
Individuals: Organic: Active: Combatant: Dangerous: Old Foe: Unknown: Unknown: Moonhunter One  
  
Moonhunter One is an Old Foe combatant patterned off of the lunar cult. Though the means with which Moonhunter One is able to be present in this reality following the sealing is unknown, Moonhunter One appears to have been present in this universe for quite some time. As an instrument of the Lunar Cult, Moonhunter One is equipped with a wide array of gravitic weapons to embody the tides of the Old Foe homeworld's moons. A wide array of other weapon systems have been observed, but the full array of weapons is currently unable to be determined. Moonhunter One's present combat capabilities are beyond your ability to confront in combat and engaging it without the benefit of gravitonic defence systems at all is strongly advised against for the user's safety.  
  
Recommendation: Avoid conflict with.  
  
 _Samus' Notes:_  
The Moonhunter seems to be more sadistic and predatory than the Sunstalker, I'm wondering if we could use that to lure it into a trap?  
  
 _Arne's Notes:_  
If Spire's words on the Sunstalker being a coward are accurate, could that apply to the Moonhunter? I just need to think of a way to keep it from fleeing then.

  
  
Equipment: Modular: Arm Cannon Attachment: Melee: Bayonet projector  
  
The Bayonet Projector allows the arm cannon to fire either a coherent energy blade or extend a physical energy sheathed blade from either beneath or above. The blade, like the Arm-Sword; is upgraded by beam weapons and a certain number of melee blade specific upgrades. The primary effect of this is to double the avenues of bladed melee attack the user can make in combat.  
  
 _Samus' Notes:_  
Definitely handy but not something I hope to have to use too often.  
  
 _Arne's Notes:_  
Modifying my fighting style to account for a second bladed implement isn't really that hard. Just a matter of switching between forms.

  
  
Equipment: Modular: Shoulder Attachments: Ranged: Munitions Launcher  
  
The munitions launcher serves as a platform for releasing extra munitions without occupying the attentions of the arm cannon. Primarily a method of firing grenades, specialist projectiles or fluid streams, the Munitions launcher is also able to be utilized while in alternate form to allow for ranged combat capability in the alternate mode.  
  
 _Samus' Notes:_  
The range on these weapons is pretty good, you could get a lot of use out of them indirectly bombarding distant targets I'd imagine.  
  
 _Arne's Notes:_  
Enemies in cover I'd imagine would be a primary target for the munitions launcher; a well-timed airburst could clear out most enemies in hiding.

  
Equipment: Modular: Wrist-Mounted: Ranged: Wrist Gun  
  
The wrist gun is a secondary ranged weapon attachment designed for usage on the freehand. While its projectiles lack the raw power of the arm cannon's; they allow for additional fire capabilities and can serve as a backup tool in case multiple avenues of fire are required. The wrist gun can utilize all the same weapons that the arm cannon may utilize at reduced strength. It may also be separated and used as a sidearm should the need arise.  
  
 _Samus' Notes:_  
You could get a lot of use out of it in melee honestly. But usually, I'd say I'd only really need my arm cannon most of the time? Still, not bad to have as an option.  
  
 _Arne's notes:_  
Using this for the shock coil should be handy for getting energy cycled back into my suit.

  
  
Upgrades: Chozo Designed: Mobility/Offense: Screw Attack  
  
The Screw attack emits a zero-point field around itself that reduces nearly all matter it comes into contact with into quark dust by twisting their bonds at the subatomic level. Energy fields are similarly disrupted as the "screw" effect twists most particle-waves into incoherent paths, instantly breaking through any but the most resilient of defences. The spin motion of the user is generally required to initiate the user, limiting its usage to somersaulting jumps, thus requiring practice to make offensive usage of. However, it also provides for excellent defensive capabilities while moving as virtually no attacks can break through the field it generates.  
  
Samus' Notes: I think I'm getting good with aiming the Screw Attack just right to catch flying enemies. But I think it'd only really reach its full potential with something that could let me somersault indefinitely.  
  
Arne's Notes: The primary downside to this is that it's a bit hard to make use of any ranged weapons while building up the necessary spin for the weapon to work. The primary upside is that there's not much better for going through a contested gap with a single jump.

  
  
Equipment: Weapons: Multiple Origin: Shockwave Quake Generators  
  
Shockwave quake generators are primarily mounted in the boots and gauntlets and serve as a means to clear out surrounding enemies, augment kicks or punches, and make a means of dynamic entry; removing large numbers of targets upon landing. Shockwave quake generators can be charged up for larger shockwaves that will not only damage enemies with the energy field released but also physically push them back with the high kinetic energy ion field they generate.  
  
Samus' Notes: It seems the best time to charge up a shockwave would be while using the screw attack. That should allow me to make the best possible entry, cut through anything immediately in my way and push away the rest. Wondering if I could modify the fields somehow, launching targets up would be more useful to me than pushing them back.  
  
Arne's Notes: The primary usage I see for this would be in getting any necessary range I need back or in keeping an opponent off balance. It should also be pretty good in isolating an individual target I'd like to single out too.

  
  
Weapons: Alternate mode: Explosive: Power Bomb/Power Pulse  
  
The Power Bomb and Pulse release a contained zero-point energy explosion of enormous force, able to destroy nearly anything it touches. The extreme heat and force of the blast are accompanied by a particle disruption effect that will tear apart the bonds of most forms of matter and overload the coherency of most forms of energy screens. The containment helps to prevent excessive collateral damage, but as the bombs are physical munitions; the user must concentrate to produce more of them.  
  
Samus' Notes: I'll have to make a note to only use these when necessary. The amount of damage one of them can do is really unfortunate to think about. Being able to clear out Denzium obstacles would be quite useful though. Could the area of effect be modified somehow?  
  
Arne's Notes: There's a slight delay between creating the bomb and detonating it that needs to be adjusted to, but I'm wondering if that could be filed down to something more immediate.

  
  
Upgrades: Beams: Light-based: Chozo originated: Spazer Beam  
  
The Spazer Beam fires a spread shot of nine coherent light packets in a pseudo-laser that allows for a much wider area of effect and considerably more damage than standard beam weapons. However, the Spazer Beam is often regarded as more of a beam to be combined with more specialist weapons than a weapon that truly stands on its own, with most users valuing it for its ability to multiply their shots more than anything else. The Spazer Beam's distinctive orange colouration is a product of the particular wavelength of the pseudo-laser packets and is considered rarely seen due to how commonly the Spazer Beam is combined with other weapons. The Spazer Beam's charged form is the Refractor, where the beams will bounce off of any target it is not able to penetrate to damage other targets until the energy packets lose coherence, causing havoc with tightly packed enemies in confined spaces.  
  
Samus' Notes: The spread is controllable through thought, depending on how far you want the beams to go from your initial target. I generally prefer the spread to be fairly tight; I don't need the shots going all over the place. I'm somewhat concerned with the Refractor's potential for collateral damage too. It is pretty fun to watch though.  
  
Arne's Notes: For my purposes, a widespread generally serves the best. At close range spreading out hits should be able to catch more enemies at once. I think that as long as I'm able to keep close, the bouncing of the Refractor should be largely controllable too. I have to agree with the assessment that its more of an augment than a weapon on its own though.

  
  
Cultures: Defunct: Defunct circa Forbidden Wars: Dominion of Krazimak  
  
The Dominion of Krazimak was a theocratic society based on the worship of beings they dubbed the Manifold Beyonders or "Xarzamloq". An aggressively expansionistic society under the control of bloodthirsty priest-generals who sought to harvest ever-growing amounts of life for favour, the Dominion and its vassal states organized into the Sacred Hierarchy would come to conflict with the Sophont Commonwealth over a vast gulf of time and space in the largest war in the universe's history. In a war fought with manipulation of reality, temporal travel and fluctuations, across all dimensions recorded to both factions, and routinely being interrupted by third parties; the Forbidden Wars would rearrange the cosmos. Over the course of a span beyond conventional measurement, the Sophont Commonwealth would gradually overwhelm the Hierarchy and liberate most of its war-thrall societies before banishing the Dominion itself beyond any universe into an isolated pocket reality with no means of access following the Chozo and Alimbics severing it from the rest of existence and having the whole of the war time-locked to ensure its history may never be altered. Most records of the Forbidden Wars are beyond your clearance of access.  
  
 _Samus' Notes:_  
The Elders were always really evasive on the specifics of the conflict. I know Old Bird fought in it but he never really likes to speak about it. Still, if the stories are accurate; the Moonhunter and Sunstalker might be the last two of their kind left. I can't imagine them surviving trapped on their own without killing themselves.  
  
 _Arne's Notes:_  
Alimbic histories talk about them less as a culture that had to be fought and more a bunch of monsters that were rightfully vanquished. But I'm left wondering, what sort of conditions did their society exist in to drive them to where they ended up? I don't think I'll be getting answers though; the records are sealed shut.

  
  
Chozo Logs: The Whirlwind Reaped  
  
The blade of hubris has felled countless beings over the course of the ages. None dreamed of more nor fell harder than the Old Foe whose name will forever be among those cursed by history. They who had sought to dominate and subjugate now find themselves with nothing to conquer, their throats perpetually parched of the nectar of empire. Though they have made us raise our hands in anger for an aeon, we now stand triumphant and turn our minds to the peace that they rejected in search of the fickle favour of dire spirits. Though we grieve for that which has been lost, we rejoice for the farewell to arms and turn our eyes to rebuilding and nurturing that which senseless conflict destroyed. Let this be a lesson to all who would seek to paper over the faults of their tyrants with the exploitation of the conquered. Would only that their leaders have not threatened to drag their people into oblivion than surrender.  
  
 _Samus' Notes:_  
I'm wondering if this was why the Chozo started to decide to look beyond the material universe? It might have seemed like the universe had nothing left to offer after so much destruction.  
  
 _Arne's Notes:_  
Old Bird seems to be shellshocked a few of the times I look at him, and I see that in Elmorni too. What did they see that they won't share with us?

  
  
Alimbics Logs: The Great Triumph  
  
The greatest of foes meets the greatest of ends. The insane howling of the Hierarchy will never again be heard in the stars. Our genius and prowess has proved instrumental in the forging of this magnificent triumph. Though in our mercy we have deigned to spare the Dominion through banishment rather than dismantling, we have rid ourselves of ever having to consider their name ever again. From the sorrows of their apex to the glories of their nadir, we have seen the totality of their measure and have found them wanting. Our order has emerged from this trial more potent than ever before. And all who have shed their blood in the name of civilization and the rightful law will not have shed it in vain; for from this day forward the continued ascension of our kind is unstoppable.  
  
 _Samus' Notes:_  
If Zurvduat weren't seventy thousand years too young I'd have figured he wrote this. It sounds so arrogant and condescending.  
  
 _Arne's Notes:_  
The Alimbic-Chozo cold war started not long after the Forbidden Wars notably. I think I can see why they started to fall out.

  
  
Upgrades: Mobility: Gravitonics: Luminoth originated: Gravity Boost  
  
The Gravity Boost regulates and controls gravity for the user, rendering them able to function at their preferred gravity in all cases and also neutralizing unwanted friction and drag such as that created by water. The Gravity Boost also allows for flight through activating its thrusters and gravity regulation. The Gravity Boost furthermore negates the harmful effects of most gravitational attacks.  
  
 _Samus' Notes:_  
Finally, something that will let me move around in fluidic environments the way I'm supposed to! I hate the feeling of being dragged down by the environment.  
  
 _Arne's Notes:_  
Hrm, what's the top speed I could get the thrusters going at I wonder?

  
  
Species: Fauna: Mammaliform: Cetaceoid: Titan Class Organism: Radiovoric: Hostile: Goradon  
  
A species of Titan class Organism native to the planet of Zoran, the Goradon is one of the apex predators of its oceans. Well known amongst the progenitors for their ability to continually grow in size so long as food remains ample, Goradons typically seek to draw their energy from areas of naturally occurring concentrations of fissile material. It is these fissile materials that they consume instead of food for the most part with the except of other radiovoric organisms. Goradons also have weaponizable sonar pulses that can generate tsunamis and can click their jaws together for bubble blasts of extinction event proportions. With their immense strength and speed, the Goradon is also able to use its sheer bulk as a massively destructive weapon, and caution must always be exercised when dealing with one. However, the ears of the Goradon are a weakness, as sonic weapons delivered directly to the eardrum will cause substantial discomfort in the organism.  
  
 _Samus' Notes:_  
It's a shame to have to fight something so majestic. But I think I can manage to free it from its current condition without hurting it too much.  
  
 _Arne's Notes:_  
I'm honestly slightly intimidated by having to handle something this big out to try and kill me. But based on what we know, if we can break the berserk state it should lose interest in fighting us.


	16. Forlorn: Skybreak (AS & SA)

_Vengarium, Zenthra, Zoran_

  
With their objective in mind, it wasn't too long until they entered the Zenthra region. Guided by Spire's sonically imbued statuary, they took a secret path through the caverns that would bring them to an impressive entrance that had a fair few guardians in the way. But combat was not something they were strangers to, having cut through the bulk of their opposition already and now only dealing with the Slench quartet left to obstruct their path. The large eye like cyborg Samus faced tried to handle her with a burst of Shock Coil neutrinos, but she fired off her newest instrument, the temporal distort. Time slowed to a crawl, the incoming stream moving as fast as lightning moving slower than she could walk. It lasted only a few seconds as she perceived time, but she managed to strike the Slench with a trio of charged beam shots, joined by the sine waves of the phase-wave beam that passed straight through solid cover to strike the cyborg. Each impact rocking into the Slench like a meteor.  
  
Time resumed its normal flow; the Slench went flying while Arne teleported behind the other one and grabbed onto it with his cannon's grapple beam. Firing away with his wrist gun shock coil; he sapped into its shielding, pulled it straight into a kick that made the whole room reverberate. Around his body was his newest upgrade; the steel grey, stony brown, and diamond white suit of Diamont artifice. A work that gave his armour a somewhat more powerful-looking appearance replete with crystal formations emerging from his pauldrons, a more pronounced gorget, a series of diamond coloured reinforcement strips around the edges of the major plates. And to cap it all off was a pair of vaguely blade-like antennae emerging from the temples of his helm.  
  
Samus' similarly changed armour easily shrugged off the turret fire directed her way before she released a pulse of built-up absorbed energy as the diamonds in the suit glowed purple. The crackling purple pulse evaporated many of the nearby turrets and; combined with the shockwave quake emitters; repulsed the attempts by one of the Slenches to charge at her. A power missile fueled by five of her super missiles slammed into the disoriented Slench, smashing it into the nearby wall just as her left arm projected a white coloured energy shield; circular and tall enough to cover much of her torso. Angling it gently, she deflected the incoming Imperialist barrage right into the Shock Coil using Slench; each keen reverberating together with the ping of the shield and making it flash briefly.  
  
With the Slench reeling and trying to turn invisible, Arne pinpointed its location with the Echo visor and lashed out at it with his imperialist laser; prompting it to change cloaks once again. But such would not avail it, as Arne swapped to the Electroperception visor and found the wounded tan and brown eye-like techno-organic creature almost limping in the air. Not wanting to prolong its sad state, Arne launched himself in the screw attack to smash through its shielding and fire off a single power bomb with his munition launchers. A yellow-white explosion expanded rapidly and consumed the slench in its killing light right before Samus met it with a charged shot she made sure included the ice beam. The sudden shift from such extremes of cold and heat shattered the cyborg into pieces, leaving them to strike at another from either side with the Magnum cannon as it tried to adjust to the reduced numbers available to it. Confronted with its weakness, the third slench erupted in an explosion as the rounds cored straight through it, leaving it out of the equation almost immediately.  
  
Laser fire from the first slench sought to target the two; finding only air as their temporal distorts went off once more and Samus jabbed her arm-sword into the biomechanical creation's pupil. Dropping down and firing off her jets, she split the Slench in twain, landing amidst the fireballs of its halves detonating. Her grapple beam shot out and grabbed the last one, pulling energy from its systems into her suit and away from its defences, fully recharging her shielding. With its shielding compromised, the Slench was now wide open to one hit of Arne's Autoflak after the other until one last charge shot was all he needed to finish it off in a massive black cloud of fragments.  
  
The wailing of the dying Slench hitting the ground and then erupting in a fireball that echoed through the caverns cut off shortly, and the two exchanged their arm lock and gentle headbutt action that signified their bond almost immediately.  
  
"Nice shooting there Arne." She said with a gentle laugh.  
  
"I've been handling slenches my whole life. I think I can handle a bunch of low graders at once. But well, you were great too." He said, chuckling with her as they went through the door.  
  
"What do you think we'll be able to find there?" She asked as they passed into the next chamber, a simple square item room with yet another door behind it, a visor upgrade floating in the pit below.  
  
"Not sure, I'm feeling it's a suit upgrade..." He said, tapping his helmet's chin briefly.  
  
"You're going to need to come through a direction they can't anticipate. Just going directly into the jaws of the enemy will get you found and driven back. Luckily there's something that can help you get to where you need to go. They will have a guardian there of course, but you can handle it. Especially with what you'll find on the route." Arne remembered Spire saying last time he checked one of the statues, though he was as of yet unsure of what he was referring to.  
  
The Prize the Slenches guarded was simple enough, the mind visor to see the thought waves of beings that might otherwise elude detection as whispy, impressionistic figures based on their self-perception, but that wasn't what Spire meant. It did however, reveal a path that they had felt with their psychic senses but were not quite able to perceive with light to their left. After using the restoration station that was visible to the ordinary eye, they went through the hidden door and were seamlessly teleported down into lower Zenthra, stowed away in a dimension the Alimbics had created just for it.  
  
The halls were wide and tall, stretching into countless destinations and vistas. As always there were foes to be dealt with; the usual swarm of Alimbic defence machines, but such hardly was of much relevance to them as they shot through with their speed boosters, following the path that they could see only through the mind visor.  
  
Stopping quickly at a turn and shinesparking down the hallway to bring themselves to a halt in front of the next door; they came to a brief pause before opening it. Arne looked at Samus and saw something almost a little holy, an avenger, slightly radiant, brimming with energy and enthusiasm but flickering with the subtle fires of anger. Yet he could see the faint suggestion of feathery wings behind her; Chozo and Human, Aran and Sekh. He almost envied that clear perception of herself.  
  
But when she looked at Arne she saw uncertainty, an image that wasn't quite solid; flickering between something more human and more alimbic. One a more knightly image with a straight visor and a more armet like mouthplate, crest melded into antennae at either side; armour more mechanical and human; proud and decorated in the runes of his clan. And sometimes that image was more like an alimbic, lankier, skinnier, without a neck at all while his head simply floated above his shoulders. Separate and competing identities that each sought to be the sole vision of himself.  
  
It was something that disquieted Samus briefly before he looked at her; shifting the image fully towards that nobler human visage. He was choosing, slowly but surely.  
  
The door dilated open, granting them passage through a tunnel that lead to another portal, one that they instinctively recognized was the way through, but also one where they saw yet another corpse. One that had dragged itself here if the blood smeared everywhere was anything to go by. The body was still fresh, and the blank eyes of the reptilian seemed to stare off into space as if they were still awake. A helmet fitted for its varanid like snout was discarded by its side, caked in blood. Its tongue lolled out of its mouth, purple against its green scales, and a clearly visible gash was seen across its midsection.  
  
"Who is this guy?" Samus said as she leaned down, trying to not look at the blood as she looked at the gorilla sized body, noting that their rifle was still warm to the touch.  
  
"Armor logs say he's a Freelancer. Stygak. Big shot in the whirlpool galaxy. Some sort of quark scale machines interfered with his armour's medical systems but I should be able to terminate them with a scan." Arne said, forcing the eyelids of the reptilian to close with a tug from his fingers. A motion he followed by dipping an armoured finger into the blood of the fallen hunter and painting a rune on his forehead.  
  
"He's only been dead for a few minutes; some of his cells are still alive. One of the machines could save him. Then we can get some information out of him." She said, nodding at Arne. "Come on, shut off the attobots, let's get him to a restoration station." She said, easily hoisting the body over her shoulder once Arne's armour pinged hers to confirm the task was completed, his free hand scooping up the helmet as he walked with her towards a restoration station near the portal.  
  
She laid the body on the station and stepped back as a ring of light surrounded the corpse after Arne had reaffixed the helmet. The body, despite missing most of its organs began to knit itself back together in a rather unpleasant to watch process. Based on the still viable DNA from the remains and an analysis of the traces of the spirit left in the body, the machine worked what was a rather standard miracle to the Alimbics or Chozo. Armour seemingly rematerialized as it flowed together, damaged functions came back online and the circular depression began to rise before a final jolt called the departed spirit back to its body.  
  
Even as...gory as watching such a mangled body be restored to function and life was, the sensation of being near the mystic lighthouse that called the departed spirit back gave Samus goosebumps. She hung her jaw open slightly while Arne simply watched in fascination, his eyes widening slowly as the Mind Visor started to shift. No more did he simply appear as he did in reality, but consciousness changed him into his bold and brash visage of himself. Stronger, braver, feistier, ready for round two.  
  
He shot up with a start and let out a prolonged hissing roar as he grabbed his gun and looked back and forth, startled as if he had been forcibly awakened from a deep slumber. "WHERE IS THAT THING!? I'LL GUT I-" He said before his cyan visor fixated on the two, the rotary gun he wielded as easily as a rifle starting to spool up before he thought better of it. His turquoise and green armour made a simple clank against the floor as his digitigrade feet took a step back, the pointed boots feeling for a secure standing on the hard floor below.  
  
"Who are you two?" He said.  
  
"Aira-Sekh." Samus said, offering only her Chozo name to the recently resurrected Freelancer.  
  
"Sarxyl Avar" Arne offered. The Alimbic name evoked strange sensations. It was one of his names, yet...it sometimes felt unnatural to even say.  
  
He looked at the station and let out a cough of dissatisfaction as he figured out the implications of where he was. "I must have snuffed it then." He said, working his jaw. "So, I owe you two then." He offered a nod and lowered his weapon, stopping the spool up.

"Oh, it wasn't a problem at all. You just looked like you needed help." Samus said, trying to be as friendly as possible to ease him back into the land of the living.  
  
"Yeah, thanks. Guess I got in over my head." He hissed, disappointed in his inability to handle himself. "Now, I got a question, do you two know what this place is? Never seen this much progenitor tech in one place before...or anyone like you wearing it." He said, gesturing to their armour, he knew what Alimbics and Chozo looked like; they didn't look like either.  
  
"Zoran. It's an old progenitor world." Arne said, trying his best to be helpful as Stygak gave a slow nod.  
  
"This must be a pocket dimension then. But you two, what are you exactly? Beneath that armour." He said, looking up and then directly at the two children. The way they moved, the way they spoke even vocoded through the helmets. That all aroused interest, or perhaps suspicion might be a better term.  
  
"Well, uh." Arne started. He thought about his answer for a bit. What was he exactly? What would be the simplest answer to his question that would remain truthful? Should he just offer a lie? No that wouldn't sit right with him, there was no reason to deceive Stygak intentionally. Yet he didn't want to say Alimbic, but could he say human? He was standing next to the only living human he'd known since he was orphaned and she...well...could she be called that?  
  
"Hybrids." Samus said, answering Stygak's question for him before he could get impatient, stepping slightly forward to get Stygak's attention. Internally Arne felt some relief while Samus puffed her chest slightly. It was an incomplete truth to be sure, but a truth all the same.  
  
"Must be young then. You're awfully short for a Chozo Warrior, and as for you one-eye; don't think I don't know Alimbic tech when I see it. Not sure how you skinned that off of a dead species though." He said, examining Samus and then Arne closely, the roaring crocodilian like symbol on his chest at about eye level with their faces as he approached.  
  
"No beak either, and you've got a neck...five-fingered hands, plantigrade posture, s-curved spines...both of you are human aren't you?" He said continuing his analysis and then coming to his conclusion with a nod.  
  
"I...well...y-yeah we are." Arne said, deciding that he wasn't quite able to lie his way out of this one and exhaling a bit.  
  
"Hatchlings like you already got scutes eh? Must have done something respectable to get that kind of honour." He said with a proud hiss, chest swelling with pride in having guessed correctly.  
  
"Okay okay, before we get any further. I need to ask you, what gave you that injury we found you with?" Samus asked, clearing her throat and then approaching him.  
  
"I was hanging around with some colleagues when I noticed a portal on the station Heldris. I told anyone who didn't have the scars to go in to clear out for myself and my ship to go in, give myself another chance to prove I've got what it takes." He said, reporting his findings with a strangely cold voice, letting out an emphatic cough at the end and briefly flicking his eyes upwards.  
  
"Hanging around? Around what?" Samus asked. The expression confused her briefly as she squinted at him. She was trying to picture what he meant, and for the moment, she only drew rather silly images in her mind.  
  
"I think out of a building, maybe? It could be some kind of bungie sport?" Arne offered, shrugging and slowly spreading his hands to indicate his confusion.  
  
"Are you allowed to do those kinds of sports on Heldris station?" She asked before Arne shrugged his shoulders.  
  
"It's an expression. It meant I was socializing with my friends." Stygak said with an abrupt cough to get the two of them to stop interrupting. Once he had their attention, he resumed without skipping a beat.  
  
"I rushed in without thinking and found myself exploring the abandoned hallways, an unfortunate move on my part, but seeking to demonstrate that I was superior outweighed other considerations. I heard combat, took out some space pirates and drones, a few larger guardians. Found a few dead Federation soldiers incapable of surviving." He said, almost seeming scornful at the marine's inability to survive the death trap Zoran was now. Samus briefly balled up her fist while Arne exhaled sharply in irritation, but so far no outburst was forthcoming.  
  
"I was investigating the source of the strange howls and sounds of weapons fire from what I determined to be Spire and Armaud. The chance to join them and demonstrate superiority was intoxicating. But I had not counted on the second source of the howling. I made an error and fought to survive. I clearly failed, so I must improve myself." He said with a hacking cough of emphasis.  
  
"Wait wait, did you see anything of interest?" Samus asked, stepping forward to get his attention and his head turned in her direction followed by a reptilian choking sound.  
  
"Yes, some manner of machine plugging itself into an Alimbic Palatine Mind's cerebral circuits. It's got some kind of upgrade guarded there too. What are you planning on doing with this information?" He reported, straightening his posture somewhat before asking his question.  
  
"We're going to take it out, obviously." Samus said, placing a hand on her hip and nodding at Stygak. She meant it, and the reptilian seemed plenty convinced of it as he lowered his head slightly and then looked back at her.  
  
"Brave for a pair of children aren't you?" He said wryly but approvingly. Almost enviously even, based on the sort of emotional sensation the two were able to read from him. Their psychic abilities weren't hugely refined despite all of its potential, but empathy was simple enough to pick up on.  
  
"If we weren't brave, would we even be here?" Arne said, clanging his left fist against his chest plate and nodding before standing at ease. Praise came to him rarely from adults, and he grabbed onto what was offered with relish.  
  
"You've clearly done better than myself in that case. Your superiority despite your age and smaller stature shames me; I hope to redeem myself if that is alright?" He said with a stooped posture that Samus quickly figured for an equivalent of a bow, his tail raised and wagging slightly before he let out a low pop and hiss.  
  
Before Arne could speak though, Samus cut in. "The Marines, are there any left?" She said.  
  
"Some, yes, according to my last memories." He said, gradually straightening himself.  
  
"Can you find and rescue them? We'll be able to take care of the Sunstalker and Moonhunter." She said. Getting them off the planet was going to be a priority if they wanted to keep them safe, and he seemed more likely to know how to handle a bunch of scared marines than they did.  
  
"I can provide you with the location of a relatively safe area, the hangar where we put our ships. You should be able to hold out there until we're done." Arne said; suit sending over the map data immediately with Stygak taking only a moment to confirm the information.  
  
"I suppose I should ask what to do should I see either of these beings." He asked, raising his neck into an S-Curve and tilting it.  
  
"Run and hide. Keep as many alive as you can. But, I don't think they'll be focused on you; not when we're hitting their machine." Samus said, letting the opacity of her visor drop a bit to give him a look at her eyes, warm and trustworthy. "We'll be able to handle this...but one more thing." She said, her expression hardening a bit. "Don't say the people who didn't make it weren't worthy again or else." She said with a glower before stepping off.  
  
"Bold. This offer does not require dissent on my part. Hunt well, children." He said as the two stepped into the portal. Samus offered a wave goodbye, simply raising her hand and giving it a slight shake as she walked down. Arne gave him the courtesy of a nod before leaving, following behind her before overtaking her.  
  
Samus sighed and relaxed some of the tension as she looked into the other side of the portal hall, the imperious and grandiose architecture of the Alimbics all around them. Statues of conquerors, scholars, heroes, and explorers. Though to Samus' eyes there wasn't much difference between the first and the last categories. Not the way that the histories attached to each statue talked about them anyway.  
  
Arne knew who they were and what they stood for. Those who began to expand the Alimbic's territories into the Black Eye Galaxy fifty thousand years ago. Zurvduat told him they were glorious, yet so many had the look of an imperialist. They were surveying subjugated lands, standing over conquered foes, or simply standing in poses meant to awe him with how small he was. He saw so very few that reminded him of Elmorni's gentle warmth, and soon turned his head from them as he looked down at the end of the hallway. So far it seemed that everything was fine here, and he left the place behind.  
  
It would be just a few minutes of travel before they found what they were looking for at last, passing by several Federal Marine corpses. A whole squad's worth. Most of their bodies were in poor condition, missing large portions of their organs or multiple limbs. One was half skeletonized and half disintegrated, the vaguely pachydermid skeleton's jaw having fallen off after the tissue holding it in place had been blasted off.  
  
Arne gulped and let his suit counter the rise in nausea that he sensed. Death was something he would just have to acclimate to. If he couldn't handle a few corpses, what good was he? Still, he made the time to paint the runes on the dead where he could, looking for those whose blood was still present to make the marks and say his goodbyes.  
  
Samus lingered a bit, muttering an apology under her breath as she showed the back of her hand and spread her pinky and thumb finger to wish for the passage of each soul to be a safe one. Then she focused, steeling herself with the fight to come. These dead would be avenged shortly, she was sure of it.  
  
They stepped through the last door, coming to a cylindrical machine containing an engineered pseudobrain within a transparent container the size of a truck. Green and mustard yellow equipment hooked into the tank containing the Palatine mind as it quivered within the container. Platforms were spread throughout for direct, hardline links to the machine at the centre.  
  
But that was not what they were looking for.  
  
That would be directly above.  
  
The most immediate comparison was to a spider. Its head like a metallic mantis mixed with some terrible lamprey with a ring of eight metallic mandibles, a thicket of eight legs each splitting into four claws at their ends. From its rear came a curling tail, long and ending in a scorpion-like barb. Its body was lined with geometric glowing lines, the plating of its chassis moving in sync with the rest of the sauropod sized machine as it scuttled towards them at high speeds. The sandy yellow colouration mixed with the glowing purple lines and highlights made it stand out well in the environment, while every step it took filled their ears with a strange rattling noise.  
  
Their armour identified it as a Zakiriqt; a war machine of the old foe, somehow constructed with materials local to the planet and equipped with the ability to phase through solid objects; though their progenitor blood and armour should keep it out. Its weapon systems made it read as a threat of tremendously high caliber, and the roar like knives scraped on flint almost seemed to pierce into their very bones.

The Zakiriqt stood between them and a means to contact Spire and Armaud. Its metallic hide had been anointed with the blood of dozens of people just trying to get away. Its masters, however unknown their goals were; were monsters left behind from a past best left forgotten. Yet strangely, Samus and Arne did not feel the usual cold emptiness that most machines gave. They sensed outrage, intruders, violators, and trespassers they were. The Zakiriqt would be no mere cold contraption, its anger burned hot and bright, and they felt the simmering sensation of its ire inside of their heads. They perceived a beating war drum throbbing with the flicker of hateful emotional flame in their mind's eye, and it almost made them doubt for a moment.  
  
"We need to get contact going with Spire and Armaud if anyone's going to get off this planet. Mendelle, Stygak, and any of the surviving Marines; they're all counting on us." Samus said as she shifted her stance. She felt a weight on her shoulders, the pressure of expectation. Not simply to impress Old Bird, not just to silence Grey Voice's doubts, not just to show up mother brain, but to preserve life. People needed her to survive, and she couldn't let them down. Her stomach hardened like steel as she clenched her gut and waited for the machine to rush her.  
  
"We'll save them...don't worry. Nobody's going to die because of us." Arne said, looking briefly at the corpses behind. His eyes briefly caught that while the insignias indicated that there was a platoon here, there weren't enough bodies there to make up a whole platoon. Those who just couldn't make it, he figured. His fault, these corpses were only minutes old. If he hadn't been so slow...no, there was no time to wonder about "what if". The machine was already moving.  
  
The machine's scuttling body would have been invisible to the unassisted human eye, but their reflexes were more than fast enough to get them out of the way with a single jump. The scorpion tail whipped around towards Arne, and Samus felt her heart briefly drop before swallowing the sensation, charging up her stacked beam. Arne double jumped over the incoming tail, feeling the air start to spark into plasma below him and flipped himself around to call forth the storm of his shock coil.  
  
Samus struck the machine just as it raised a limb to block the Shock Coil, letting nine blue-white bolts slam into its head module and encase the thing in a cascade of instantly generated frost dozens of meters thick. She felt relief for a moment, but the sharp sensation of danger returned and a flashing image of incoming shards of ice. She dismissed them as a nonthreat and simply took them head-on, shrugging off the impact to build up speed.  
  
Arne sensed her movements and looked nervously at the emergence of a strangely shaped gun formed out angular struts on its back, folding itself into a cage for a glowing accretion disc around a black void. The pull of the vortex hardly concerned him; the gravity boost would keep him safe. But the energy it was producing just drawing in matter and letting it fall into its pit was something he felt concerned about, even more so when it leapt out in a miniature quasar.  
  
The air howled and screamed and tore apart like cloth in the hands of a giant. Samus saw the burst flying towards her at a hair's breadth under the speed of light just before it could arrive. Her spine felt like it was trying to contort straight out of her skin, and her lungs felt ready to implode. The stinging sensation of imminent extreme danger faded as she rolled into her morph ball and just missed the beam that sailed straight overhead.  
  
Arne had been hammering away at the machine with his missiles all the while. Every click and shiver of his arm registered like the feedback of making a punch. He wouldn't let this thing hurt anyone else. He would prove that he was able to best even the most potent foe, that the faith that Samus put into him was deserved. She believed in him, Elmorni believed in him...hopefully, Zurvduat would too. But the thing let out another one of its shrieks in his direction, making the missiles he had on its way start to explode.  
  
He outpaced the sound of both the shriek and the impact of Samus' speed boosted form. A reverberating blow he felt as much as heard Samus knocked the metal spider into the air. He knew what he had to do; he couldn't let up against an enemy like this. Not even for a moment. Right before it could flip itself to land on its feet, his grapple beams lanced out and he gave it a massive swing.  
  
Samus pounded it with shot after shot, every impact making a piercing keen and a burst of ice materialised into being. Each blast was aimed towards the same precise point as the last as she sought to create a weakness in its shielding. It was moving again, however, throwing Arne around and pulling him with his own grapple beam towards it, it was seething at being struck by two of its makers' old foes, its cries of rage and spite at those who would deny it its purpose. Arne's cries though were of surprise and a bit of fear before sudden pain as he cried out in agony from an impact.  
  
He rarely felt real pain; his armour blocked it out. But the room shaking impact he was put through and then the lancing sensation of a strange transmission into his suit made him feel like his skin had been doused in acid and then had a current ran through them. His cries were not pleasant to hear; his body convulsing at the strange command run through it to make him suffer. His eyes wide and mouth agape with screams, he fought with every fibre of his being to reach the source of his pain. He grabbed at the leg and began to push, resisting the mysterious pseudo-energies he was commanded to feel, but the Zakiriqt raised a second leg.  
  
Its head disappeared in an enormous yellow explosion, and its body flung end over end like garbage in the wind, repeatedly slamming into the floor before smashing through a wall and going into a roll.  
  
"GET AWAY FROM HIM!" Samus shouted, fury burning so intensely inside of her Arne could just about see it through his hazed eyes as he sucked in a breath of air and tried to pick himself up. His muscles ached and felt like lead, his movements stiff and slowed until his suit and physiology corrected the aberration and proper sensation returned all at once as if nothing was ever wrong.  
  
The Machine picked itself up, pulling its body through the hole it had made with its shielding blazing in beehive patterns around it. Mandibles rippled below its optics and it seemed almost respectful of its foes. Arne returned that gaze with trepidation, while Samus' expression was now of an anger to surpass its simulacrum of battle fury.  
  
Samus leaped into action, her movements a blur of kineticism. The Zakiriqt moved, she moved faster. It struck, she parried and then countered with ear sundering force. Its body writhed to try and pin her down into one place, its vocoders screeching like hell itself all the while. Yet it could never quite pin her down as she bounced from one end of its angle of attack to another with the efficacy of a superball.  
  
Samus barely noticed as Arne returned to the fray, she paid no heed to the discharge of his own weapons. She was working on automatic, the Zakiriqt made someone that made her realise she wasn't alone in the universe scream. She would make it hurt.  
  
As they wrestled and slashed at each other she saw her chance to strike. She caught its leg and ducked aside from the transmitter. Seeing her opening, she jammed her cannon into the joint of the limb. She opened fire with a quartet of super missiles, almost threatening to knock over the ceiling, but she kept fighting.  
  
The blue lash of the positron beam arced over her head, anti-matter erupting close to her, but she only saw red. Time slowed to a crawl with the temporal distort and she made her moves without hestiation. A power bomb was dropped, the screw attack was utilised, and a shockwave kick was thrown hard enough to make the contraption's body flip over. She did not relent however, fury was driving most of her movements as she pursued her prey, teleporting directly to it with a fully charged shot at the ready, letting loose and following with another power missile.  
  
"Samus!" Arne shouted at her as she found herself suddenly forced to dodge around the flurry of limbs it had swung at her until the Stinger reached around and jabbed into her back as she tried to parry its eight limbs. She let out a cry of white-hot agony herself as she felt like her skin was trying to tear off of her muscles.  
  
If the Zakiriqt thought that was going to stop her though, it had another thing coming as she grabbed at its head through pure anger. The optics of the robot almost seemed to widen with what she for a moment, believed was fear before she decided she didn't care. Her shielding was draining quickly and everything hurt so, so very much. But she began to pull at the machine's head and her grapple beam found its target.  
  
Her suit began to leech energy from the foe, the grapple voltage feeding herself as she began to charge, then overcharge a beam shot. Her energy count rose slightly, then began dropping as she sacrificed power into the weapon.  
  
Arne knew what she was doing, but he wasn't about to let her do it alone. Honour wouldn't allow him to do such a thing, not when she had done so much for him already. He couldn't be useless, not when they had their lives and the lives of others riding on this. He pointed his arm and took aim, letting his shock coil shoot out, followed immediately by his grapple beam. The first lanced into the robot with constant crackling thunder like a sonic saw, the latter latched onto Samus' suit.  
  
As he drained energy from the machine, he fed it into Samus' armour. The overcharged beam's sphere grew bigger and bigger in front of the barrel of her cannon. He strained slightly, feeling that familiar pain start to travel through the grapple beam before his body felt like it was burning. He cried out, his legs wanted to fold over and the robot was continually trying to wriggle out of the shock coil lock it was forced into. But he didn't relent, he knew what was riding on this shot.  
  
When the sphere of charged energy was bigger than she was, Samus felt like her heart was about to explode from the pain. She had been under the influence of that pain for less than a second as a normal human perceived time. But it seemed like an eternity from her end. She cried out briefly, but gritted her teeth...not now, not when she was so close she thought as she buckled from a blast of solar energy from the maw of the spider-machine.  
  
The Pillar of light bored into her, and she knew that it was now or never. So she released that energy. She let it flow out of her cannon and expand into a column that collided with its yellow counterpart. Her orange coloured beam slammed into the rival's weapons fire like a tsunami pushing into a storm surge. The energies comingled before hers overpowered its own. Its beam was pushed back, thrown into its face, and the eruption fountained over its body. The cascade of power engulfed the Krazimak robot in a display of energy that even a primitive receiver could detect from across the solar system with ease.  
  
The air was reduced to particles rarely seen in most physical conditions natural to the universe. The shielding of the mechanical monstrosity held for a brief moment before it splintered, layer after layer cracking like glass being pressed by the full weight of the sea. The energy picked it off the ground, it tore through walls meant to withstand the worst abuse that trainees could give it as if they were simply not there. It went on and on until it shot past the horizon. The Drone that had been so stubbornly resilient so far was reduced to the simplest of particles. Its chassis was consumed in the fires of her cannon, its whole existence seemingly nullified by a shot that pierced the heavens themselves.  
  
She had her triumph, and took just one second to raise her cannon into the air in victory. And with that she fell to a knee and panted. Then she dismissed her armour entirely and rolled onto her zero suit clad back, pulling off her hood to breathe in proper air. Not from a lack of suit energy, but after such a strain on her body from pushing through that much pain, she wanted to more properly touch the ground to assure herself that sensations that weren't pain were still real.  
  
"Aira..." Arne said slightly weakly as he started to doubt once again. The usage of her Chozo name made her spare him only a brief glance before looking back up at the ceiling with a small, victorious smile on her face.  
  
"You did good there Arne...thanks..." She breathed out. She felt pride, he was alright...and they had won. She could just use this win to take a bit and lie down here. The floor was after all, remarkably comfortable.

"Comfortable?" Arne asked, sitting down with her and crossing his legs and dismissing his suit as well before lying down next to her. He winced slightly, but the hurt soon began to fade as he relaxed.  
  
"Mmhmm. Definitely feels a lot better than getting fried by some neuralyzer." A laugh was shared between the two of them as she pulled him in and laid her head atop his shoulder and snaked a hand around.  
  
"Yeah that thing was not really fun at all. Pretty terrible to go through actually. Wouldn't recommend it for anyone else." He said, smiling at her as she hummed gently to him, listening to his heartbeat beneath his suit and feeling brief elation at its regularity. The two were quite warm against each other, even in a place this dangerous. But they sensed nothing coming, and allowed themselves this moment of vulnerability.  
  
"Arne, please don't make me worry like that about you again. Can you promise me that?" She said, stroking his hair and petting it gently, picking herself up slightly to look down on him and then staring into his eyes. A glistening in the corner of her eyes told him straight away that she had cried from hearing his hurt, and he soon became all too aware of the wetness in his own eyes.  
  
"I...I'll try my best." Arne said before Samus shook her head. Worry wrote itself on her face and a frown crept its way onto her expression. His answer left her feeling incomplete, unsure. His heart felt like it had been weighed down with neutronium and thrown off a cliff. He swallowed briefly and nodded at her, not sure of how to respond.  
  
"Don't say you'll try. Promise." She said, the insistence of her tone clear as day. She wanted him to be safe; she wanted to see him happy and flourishing, just as he wanted the same for her. They were supposed to share this adventure of life, and the thought of her being unable to keep him safe weighed heavy on her heart.  
  
He felt a weight on his shoulders and his chest. Guilt, shame. He made her upset with worry, and that made him feel like a sinner. He blinked away some of the water around his eye and stared into her far more seriously this time. He knew what he was going to say.  
  
"I promise. I'm going to do better. You can be sure of it." He said, taking her hand in his own and threading a few fingers through that soft blond hair of hers before releasing his hold on her and sitting up.  
  
The two shared a hug, feeling the other's warmth. For a moment, Arne forgot where he was and just held onto her, losing himself in the affection while she clung onto him like a pillow. For a moment, there was nothing but each other.  
  
Then he felt a squeeze on his backside and his cheeks went red. "S-samus!" He protested bashfully while she made a catlike smirk before letting out a cackle as they broke off the hug. She raised her hands up and twiddled her fingers, already seeming to have cleared the tears out of her face. He almost wondered if the whole thing was a set up just to do that...but he remembered that Samus just wasn't the type of person to do that.  
  
Samus lay there laughing to herself for only a brief moment before stretching as she picked herself back up again. She stretched herself briefly and let the bones in her arms make that satisfying popping sound as she entwined them. A crack of her neck and her armour had rematerialised once again, her fingers wriggling in their gauntlets.  
  
"Well...I'm glad we got to that agreement. And that we can handle a Krazimak war machine. I was worried we were in over our heads there." Arne said, rubbing the back of his head and stretching before thumping his chest once with his left hand, his armour flashing into being with a cascade of blue light all around his body.  
  
"Oh, yeah, hugely agreed there. That was kind of...it was really a big desperation move. But it worked out right?" She said with a little smirk and a light punch to his arm that got him to flinch before returning the gesture.  
  
"But something doesn't quite add up." Samus said, making Arne stop as he approached the suit upgrade token. Hairs stood up on the back of his neck, and his eyes swivelled around to her. He quirked his brow beneath his helmet and looked intently at her.  
  
"What's that?" He asked.  
  
"How did it get here? The scan said that the materials came from this place. But there's no way that the two could have made something like that. The manufacturies wouldn't take their orders." She said, getting him to stop and think about it for a second. A thought soon began to rise like the sun in his mind.  
  
"And how would it know how to send pain signals like that through our armour? Only the people who made the suits and ourselves know that." Arne said. He tapped the chin of his helmet and gave it a thought, making a mental note that he would need to change the access routes of his suit later. But in other parts of his mind he was starting to think of culprits.  
  
"Someone has to have known. But it couldn't be either the Chozo or Alimbics right? Maybe someone told someone they shouldn't have and the information slipped out?" Samus suggested. Blaming their families felt...wrong, too hasty, too impatient to find a culprit. She'd need to give this further thought, bring it up to Old Bird or August Wings. They'd know what was up.  
  
"I think the only way we're going to find out is to deal with the Sunstalker and Moonhunter though. Let's grab the suit upgrade and contact our chaperones. We'll try to gather the evidence we can from their armour when we've won." Arne said, getting a thumbs up in return from Samus that he reciprocated. This plan seemed to give him a good feeling at the very least. Not foolproof, but definitely worth doing.

Samus stepped ahead of him to touch the upgrade token and absorb its power into her suit, Arne following just behind her and stepping back as the energies lifted the two into the air. They felt a surge of invincibility, a rush of confidence, the sensation that they could be anywhere and do anything filled their very bones for a hot minute. The transformation brought about by the upgrading to an entirely new armour always felt like another step on the path to apotheosis. A surging rush of power, energy, and an endless array of new possibilities opened to them all at once.  
  
The nimbus calmed and released them at last. Samus saw herself of course, her armour offering her a diagnostic on her newfound appearance. The battlesuit changed due to the N'kren technology integrated into it. Her pauldrons now had a somewhat upward turning edge, purple eye-like circles at their front and rear blending with the ghostly green fading into blue colouration of the armour plating. A flexible, midnight coloured metal hood covered much of her helmet, while her waist had a knee-length, split petticoat. The plating even had a somewhat more bone-like appearance, with ridges and grooves cut into it and the cheeks of the helmet were slightly sunken. She liked the shift, her eyes widening with an impressed expression of awe before she let out a bit of a laugh.  
  
Arne's armour changed in similar ways, his armour's transformation engulfing him from head to toe. His hood had a somewhat pointed fringe over his head like a thief from a long-passed era. The coat of his suit trailed a bit longer than Samus', fading into a wispy edge at its tips. His pauldrons guarding his shoulders had extended into something reminiscent of shoulder blades in shape, hinged to let his arms move with the full range of motion. The faint hint of mandibles on the bottom of his helmet's cheeks grew more pronounced, giving his armour a slightly more menacing countenance And last but not least, his visor took on an eerie purple colouration, haunting and exotic. He was a bit more reserved, taking a moment to analyse his hand and let out a gasp of wonderment before he was allowed to drop back down onto the ground.  
  
Their HUD flashed with the words "Phantom Suit acquired" before their eyes, and they scanned through a brief readout of what it offered. The ability to phase partially out of physical reality, interact with partially phased objects instead of merely blocking incorporeal attacks. Counted amongst its unique features was its immunity to the effects of dimensional instability that might otherwise drain at their shielding. And finally, to round out its special abilities was the ability to absorb many spiritual forms of energy into the suit for many purposes. This, in addition to the standard suite of augments, was what would help give them an edge against the Sunstalker and Moonhunter. A rising sensation stirred within them; they felt mighty and ready for the final round. Once they had ran, now they could stand and fight, and the two were eager for the chance to prove themselves.  
  
But they'd first need to re-establish contact with Spire and Armaud. To put at rest the question of what was going on with them. With the old foe machine destroyed, they now had access to the cerebrum of the palatine mind, and their armour suits were quick to analyse its condition. Some sort attoscale machinery afflicted the mechanical components of the artificial cybernetic creature. Still, with the guardian robot no longer present to protect it, their armours were quick to synthesise a counter as they inserted their arm cannons into the interface slot.  
  
They felt a tingling sensation coiling through their bodies as their armour tapped into the machinery. It was like snakes slithering across their skin, their brains cooperating with the armour computers to scan the affliction in the machinery. A tense surge was felt, the machines sought to spread, sought to turn on the armour the two wore and absorb it into itself. A sensation like needles in their bodies drew a wince. The machinery wanted them to be part of it, to infect them as well. To consume and assimilate as it was programmed to do. The armour and his body held it back, defences flaring to life.  
  
Arne tensed, his breath growing more shallow as he felt a moment of doubt. Could they do this? He wondered as Samus continued to try differing combinations of signals while the machines probed her defences like they were his. He felt her concern, the sinking sensation of wondering if they had come all this way for nothing. He almost allowed himself to sink into it, before realising, he had found the solution while the armour kept the infestation at bay. The right combination of impulses to break through its adaptation, unfolding before him like the beauty of a finished puzzle. Triumph and elation banished the tension, and he soon shared with his partner who grinned back at him before they shared a nod to go ahead.  
  
The tension within was banished back out and the old foe machines gave their electronic screams as they died with the armour releasing its purgation into them. Curing the machine and immunising themselves to the attoplague that had sought to absorb the whole network of the planet before being cut off by firewall protocols. The Palatine Mind before them started to hum to life once again and its soothing psychic music banished remaining doubts that may have clouded their mind and judgement. Everything was spooling up back into its proper function, every light and signal hitting the exact note it needed to.  
  
The brain within the tank pulsed briefly before running a diagnostic as soon as it felt that it was connected to everything as it should be once more. Samus and Arne could feel a brightness emanating from it as the shadow of ignorance that had kept it isolated was banished. It could see, hear, and speak as it was intended to once more. The brightness became warm, grateful, the equivalent of a laugh of victory coming forth as it restored every cut off signal and machine at once.  
  
"-You have my gratitude for restoring me to my normal state of function, Neophyte and Hatchling. The loneliness of being cut off from the choral nodes was starting to grate. You seek to deal with the intruders yes?-" They asked politely, their voice formal and courteous.  
  
"Yes. Would you happen to know where they are? We need to track them down as soon as we can." Arne asked. He had his victory, but he would need to expand on it. He felt almost eager to take on the old foe warriors, the fear of another pain signal coursing through him subsiding as he realised that his chances of winning were never better.  
  
"And Spire and Armaud too. As well as any outworlders brought here through wormhole travel." Samus said, her mind drifting briefly to the question of how many victims the Sunstalker and Moonhunter might have claimed. There was going to be justice soon, and she would be more than happy to be the one to deliver it, with her friends all at her side.  
  
"-Yes, I can have them tracked for you. I can also provide escape routes for those unintended to be present in this facility while the four of you resolve the current situation. I will start to run what interference I can, but you are likely to need to hurry.-" The Computer reported as it ran a quick analysis of everything going on across the entire planet.  
  
That got their attention surely enough. Arne straightened himself while Samus leaned in as if to hear the telepathic broadcast better. "Why would we need to hurry?" She asked, squinting her eyes ever so slightly.  
  
"-The Sunstalker and Moonhunter are seeking to refine their dimensional transport equipment, likely to try and experiment with the seal. With the faulty equipment, they currently possess they will only succeed in destroying everything within a hundred-parsec radius via dimensional collapse. You will be able to be teleported safely, but the population of the surrounding systems will be destroyed instantaneously.-" The Palatine Mind said quite plainly as if they were reporting on the chance of rain today.  
  
Arne blinked as he considered the implications of that. Then he resisted the incredibly powerful urge to try and grab at his hair through his helmet and freak out. He felt a cascade of sensations and emotions all circling his mind at once: confusion, alarm, surprise, and even a bit of fear. Samus sputtered and had the strong feeling that if she were currently drinking something, she'd have spat it out in shock. She shook her head and then focused dead on the machine as she realised that what they had just said to her was entirely real. Concerned terror had to be choked back down as she straightened herself.  
  
"Okay so how close are they to finishing this machine and well...taking out the entire sector? Which is, okay I'm almost curious as to how they can mess up that bad with one device." Arne said, recovering from his shock and trying to ease his mind. Something technical might make him feel a little less like he had a few dozen trillion lives riding on his actions over whatever time they had left to act. But he drifted his mind to other things, the realisation that doubt and worry were going to get people killed. He was scared, he was shaking, but he stilled his breathing. He couldn't let people down, not now. Now was the time to be decisive. At last, his fingers stopped twitching, he exhaled, and what to do was clear as day in his mind.  
  
"-You will have thirty-six minutes to act before they run a test of their device. The energies that they seek to use will propagate at superluminal speeds and collapse multiple coterminous planes of existence atop each other. The energies they hope to generate from this will come from an attempted dimensional siphon, but they lack access to the proper regulators to control the direction of this energy. They will attempt anyway, out of desperation.-" The Palatine mind said, seemingly unconcerned with their somewhat noted lack of ability to move from its current position or the enormous blast radius.  
  
"Okay, can you patch us through to Spire and Armaud then? We need to get in touch with them immediately. Then...what can you do to make sure we arrive there on time? Because if we only have thirty-six minutes then I'm sorry but I'm not going to just...wait for stuff to happen!" Samus said, stamping her foot for emphasis with the final sentence and puffing her chest out a bit. She felt her heart racing faster than light itself; her body almost quivering with adrenaline and excitement. She was scared, but she was also eager to do her first big good act in her life. People counted on her, and that gave her peace. She couldn't fail; she wouldn't allow herself to fail. She was going to do it, and nothing was going to stop her.  
  
"-It is done, communication links re-established. I count on your success, and I offer you my hopes for good circumstances. Fight well, Aira-Sekh and Sarxyl Avar.-" The Palatine Mind finished before starting a teleportation sequence, contracting time and space until the distance of many tens of kilometres was reduced to nothing in less time than it took for either to blink. Their tall, imposing forms were now looming over the two like giants and their eyes opening wide with surprise and pride. The two felt a surge of sunlike warmth radiating from the two as their expressions began to soften into the utmost relief like parents who had lost track of their children only to be reunited. Though of course, was that not exactly what this feeling was?  
  
Of course, Spire needed only the briefest moment to lock gazes with the two before what they felt was his huge rocky arms pulling them up into a bear hug. A squeeze that could have snapped a mountain was shared for a second before he lightened up, laughing like the rumble of the earth itself. "Kids!" He shouted with a joyous tone like a celebratory volcanic eruption, spinning them around while his eyes shuttered beneath the lenses of his helmet. The two let out half-hearted protests but hugged back, all the same, sharing in the infectious joy of the last Diamont.  
  
"Yeah...nice to see you too Spire. Just a little...tight on the squeeze there." Samus said, wriggling slightly in his grasp as she did so to make herself a bit more comfortable in his embrace.  
  
"Well, definitely glad to see you're in one piece. Just...ease up a little please." Arne said, doing his best to squeeze Spire back but of course, finding it impossible to even get his arms completely around Spire's bulk.  
  
"Lords of the Cauldron, I've been looking all over for you!" He said as he swivelled to show them to Svihaly who gave a gentle laugh before patting the two on the head. Just look at you...doing so well for yourselves even all on your own. Gahhh...I just wish I could have been there to see it." Spire said as he gently set them down for Armaud to offer them a few pats to their heads. Her metallic fingers were cold against the shielded metal of their helmets. Yet they felt safe, a wall between them and the rest of the universe. The pressure was on, higher than it had ever been before, but there was a real feeling that they'd manage. That everything was going to be okay.  
  
"You've done good for yourselves, you have my approval younglings. I can hardly say I cold have taught you better with my direct guidance...tch, you children do grow up fast don't you?" She said with warm and glowing approval. Every word made Samus widen her beaming smile beneath her helmet just a little more, while Arne flushed and chuckled slightly bashfully, unused to such warm words. It felt good, though, being praised. He lingered on those words and felt something he didn't get to feel too often, pride. Meanwhile, Samus gave her a thumbs up, nodding enthusiastically.  
  
"What's the situation then?" Spire asked, deciding to cut to business as he relaxed a bit, a sandy exhalation emerging from the filters of his helm as he shuffled ever so slightly on his feet.  
  
"There's two old foe warriors. A Sunstalker and a Moonhunter. They're trying to set up a device to bore their way through the seal but...they don't have good enough regulators or enough power." Arne said, having taken a moment to examine the designs of the machine sent to him by the Palatine mind. It wasn't going to work on so many different levels his head spun from it, unsure of how anyone could think such a thing was an even remotely good idea. Yet in disaster and mistake they could very well prove even more dangerous than if they had succeeded. That terrified the boy, made him feel the serpentine coils of concern constrict around his heart and guts.  
  
"So what they're doing is setting up a bomb that's going to wipe out...everything in a hundred parsec radius. Trillions of people are going to die if we don't stop them. We need to get out there and save them...and everyone else from themselves!" Samus said, finishing off where Arne had started. Her words were emphatic, her motions dramatic, her eyes sweeping from one of the two elders to the other and then standing herself straight up to let them know that she was dead serious.  
  
Armaud was the first to speak after a few seconds of stunned silence. Her voice had gone cold as the chill of winter itself, her stance hardening and optics glowering with iron determination. "How long have we got until then?" She asked. Direct and to the point, as she always was.  
  
"A little less than thirty-three minutes." Arne said, running the numbers in his head. They had time but still, the seconds in the timer in his HUD ticked down at an alarming rate. He felt a squeeze inside of him get tighter with every second that passed before his eyes. Based on where they were, they could get there in time, but the time for transportation made him feel sick to his stomach. Too many wasted moments.  
  
"Is there any way we could get closer to them then? As quickly as possible, preferably." Spire said, turning his attentions towards the Palatine mind that hummed a moment inside of their tank. Not with a musical note, but with the surge of energy they channelled through themselves to run every possibility.  
  
"-There is a dimensional interference field surrounding their immediate area, preventing me from teleporting you directly into their presence. However, I can insert you quite close by. You will be unlikely to be detected. From there you will be able to engage the enemy. I will run whatever support I can.-" The Palatine Mind reported, conjuring up a hard light image of exactly where they would be going and its position relative to their intended destination.  
  
"-I must advise caution; however, there are multiple Old Foe war machines in the vicinity; they will respond to the distress of their creators with all the force they can muster. But thankfully, the berserker state of the animal life nearby will not be a problem, thanks to the accomplishments of the Hatchling and Neophyte. Who have also managed to ensure the safety of a number of uninvolved who are approaching their ships even now.-" They said with a bit of pride at the end, earning a raised eyebrow from Samus who had up until this point assumed they were emotionless.  
  
"You kids really could handle this all by yourselves couldn't you? I'm so proud of you both." Spire said, patting the both of them on the back and giving an avuncular laugh. Joy and confidence filled him, and his stony heart was as a furnace of gladness at the sensation that he could fight alongside these two not as a teacher, but as a partner.  
  
"Yeah I mean, all we really did was figure out how to cancel the berserk frequency...not a big deal right?" Arne said before Armaud gave a tch and a finger wag at him. A gesture she had copied from observing people in more than a few cultures as proof that even an ancient such as she could pick up new tricks.  
  
"Don't be so humble. Take pride in your actions without letting it turn into arrogance. Most people wouldn't have figured it out so quickly in your circumstances." She said with the patience of someone who had watched time pass by since before the first human learned how to shape wood and stone into spears. She rested her hand on Arne's shoulder and then nodded at him before she glanced over to Samus.  
  
"And Samus, keep up that eagerness for the good fight. You'll need every bit of it. Now, all of you. Prepare for teleport. We'll take the fight directly to the Moonhunter and Sunstalker and end this right here, right now." Armaud said, all three other pairs of eyes fixating on her and giving her a nod of affirmation and a chorus of acknowledgements.  
  
"Now, let's get rolling." Spire said as he curled into his Dialanche alternate form. The spiked rocky sphere shook the ground once he hit the floor and prompting both Samus and Arne to let out a prolonged groan as they realised the joke he had just made.

* * *

**Consolidated Logbook Entries**

  
  
Alimbic Logs: The Long Twilight:  
  
The forces of civilisation continue to fade every passing cycle. Ever does Zoran have fewer visitors passing through its halls and fewer newcomers demonstrate the sophistication to commune with our generation than ever before. Even those who remain seem to be increasingly detached from proper material existence as the Chozo babble nonsense about transcendence and the limitations of material reality. Nonsense that more and more seem inclined to accept with every passing age. We will not succumb to such defeatism; there is yet work to be done in this material existence and not even the spirits the Chozo revere could hope to drive us from our task. Should the others be so content as to derelict their duties to the rest of the cosmos, then we will be forced to do what they are too afraid to. Perhaps they have forgotten their solemn vow to defend existence from those who would cast it into savagery, but we shall not.  
  
 _Samus' Notes:_  
  
Based on the dating attached to this message this was written only fifty years before the Alimbics disappeared completely. It's weird to think about how they just seemed to vanish at their peak without any decline beforehand.  
  
 _Arne's Notes:_  
  
The stuff written during the Order-Milieu cold war almost breaks my heart. You can just feel the disdain for the Chozo dripping off the screen in statements like this. And I'm just left to wonder where and why things started to go so sour between the two.

  
  
Chozo Logs: Dust to Dust  
  
The Long stare has come to an end as the Alimbics have passed into the realm of memory. They who had deemed themselves the greatest of all societies now exist nowhere we can observe, save for those few who slumbered far from the heartland of their order. We have victory then, yet we grieve for it was a victory not won with reconciliation or understanding but instead through simple longevity. We grieve for the lost, and say our sad farewells to those who had once called themselves our enemies. And in this grief, we find ourselves questioning the very worth of seeking to be the masters of creation. We instead ponder what can be done following the complete mastery of existence, what we can achieve beyond the present and the temporal. We are saddened then, that the Alimbics will not be able to share in this pondering, and that those who decided to call us their enemies will now never once again be our comrades.  
  
 _Samus' Notes:_  
  
This was written the year the Alimbics disappeared once and for all. It's so strange that they felt sad to see them go despite the rivalry. I'll need to look more into it.  
  
 _Arne's Notes:_  
  
The Chozo started to advocate the philosophy of transcendence in much greater numbers once the Alimbics disappeared. I wonder if their disappearance convinced them there was nothing left for them?

  
  
  
Individuals: Deceased/Resurrected: Organic: Combatant: Non-Hostile: Thegrakal: Freelancer: Stygak Legromach  
  
Stygak is a Freelancer native to the Whirlpool Galaxy famous for their willingness to take on dangerous high-intensity combat operations and return home still alive even with the most dangerous missions. Boisterous yet honourable, Stygak is also well regarded for their punctuality and eagerness to avenge any failed operations with follow up missions against any who have managed to beat him. A habit that many believe will one day lead to his permanent end if his insistence on repaying any debt owed by him regardless of how minor or extreme it is does not kill him first. Stygak makes use of a suite of heavy weapons including a rotary pulse laser and a multi-missile launcher, and in close quarters combat makes ample usage of a shockwave hammer to clear out large numbers of opponents.  
  
 _Samus' Notes:_  
  
For somebody who was dead on the floor until we saved him, he's certainly eager to get back into action. I mean...I can definitely hugely respect that.  
  
 _Arne's Notes:_  
  
I'm kind of boggled by the fact that he doesn't seem even a little bit afraid or traumatised by what he just went through. He must really love what he does.

  
  
Weapons: Beams: Chozo Originated: Phase-Wave Beam  
  
The Phase Wave Beam utilises phasic technology to harmlessly pass through non-target obstacles such as cover or walls while still imparting damaging levels of energy into enemies. Best paired with visor technology that allows for vision past obstacles or with a spotter, the Phase Wave beam will make engaging with enemies in hardened positions a much simpler prospect. The Charged version of the Phase Wave Beam is the Phase-Storm, which will create a short-lived vortex of phasic energy upon impact, damaging everything it comes into contact with.  
  
 _Samus' Notes:_  
  
A beam like this will need more caution for use in Urban areas since a missed shot has a much higher chance of hurting someone you didn't mean to. But I guess that means I have more reason to fine-tune my marksmanship.  
  
 _Arne's Notes:_  
  
There's going to be a lot of cases with entrenched enemies where something like this is going to come in handy. Or in dealing with enemies that rely on moving cover around to obstruct fields of fire, shame most energy fields block it out though.

  
  
Upgrades: Visors: Luminoth Originated: Echo Visor  
  
The Echo Visor visualises sonic information and vibrational data to allow the user to "see" sound as well as sonic profiles. Combining both active and passive sonic detection systems, the Echo Visor is well suited to watery environments in particular where its detection systems can often see much farther than electromagnetic signals. Due to its ability to detect vibrations through long-range scanning, it can even work in a limited function in vacuum environments.  
  
 _Samus' Notes:_  
  
The Echo Visor's also notably very useful for detecting burrowing enemies as the reverberations they make through the ground are extremely easy to detect with it. Should come in very useful in the future whenever I bring it with me!  
  
 _Arne's Notes:_  
  
I won't lie, it's very weird that the visor can let me see things like foetuses still inside of their mothers on ultrasonic mode. But it is a pretty interesting way to perceive the world. I imagine that it'd also be very useful for people who can't hear sounds as low or high as we can.  
  
  
Upgrades: Combat: Defensive: Multiple Originators: Shield Projector  
  
The Shield projector adds a module to the joints of the arm able to create a reflective barrier that may be used against both melee and ranged attacks. The barrier has a limited diameter, but careful angling can reflect incoming ranged attacks towards their senders. The energy and dimensional field is also able to be utilised as a deadly weapon in melee and can even be detached and thrown, upon which it will gradually dissipate over time but will damage all targets it impacts. A new barrier can be projected immediately afterwards.  
  
 _Samus' Notes:_  
  
Using this along with the bayonet or the arm sword lets me switch into a sword and board melee combat style I find that I really like. It's also great for quickly getting some cover when I need it, making sure to bounce the shield between multiple targets takes a bit of calculation though. Nothing I can't handle of course.  
  
 _Arne's Notes:_  
  
It really should be emphasised that the shield itself is a deadly weapon. You can cut straight through many forms of armour or hardened material with a good swing and the reflection ability means that it can give really, really unpleasant kinetic feedback to anyone you bash it into.

  
  
Upgrades: Utility: N'Kren Origin: Temporal Distorter  
  
The Temporal Distorter allows for altering of the flow of time for a duration affected by the intensity of usage. At maximum, at its base level the temporal distorter can pause time entirely for only six seconds from the user's perspective, which will allow them to make maneuvres and attacks as they deem necessary within the period. Upon depletion of its stored up distortion, the Distorter requires a recharge. The distorter can also be used to target another individual, but this halves the duration in which it will last. Upgrades to improve the distorter are available however.  
  
 _Samus' Notes:_  
  
I know the Chozo made their own equivalent to this not long after the N'Kren revealed their first models. It's definitely a tool that should be used responsibly, however, manipulating time in such a way is way too easily abused for this to be something for any situation...but I have to admit, there's definitely some fun ideas for it.  
  
 _Arne's Notes:_  
  
I have the strongest sensation imaginable that one day Samus is going to use this to prank me. I can just feel it in my bones. I need to think of a way to prank her right back, before she hatches her sinister yet adorable schemes.  
  
  
 _Upgrades: Armour: Physical Modifications: Diamont Originated: Frequency Suit_  
  
The Frequency suit alters the composition of the armour and its multilayered shielding to allow it to absorb energy; particularly vibrational energy; into itself. This notably has the benefit of preventing the overwhelming majority of damage from blunt force conduction through the armour, keeping the wearer safe from even the hardest blows should the shielding fail. The Frequency suit also cancels out the effects of high-frequency weapons, absorbing their vibrations and making them considerably less threatening to the wielder. The Frequency suit can store energy that can be used for many purposes, such as refilling energy, recharging the temporal distort, recharging the shielding, or releasing it in a bomb-burst of energy or to augment specific attacks. The Frequency suit will also cancel out the effects of unusual vibrations and sonic fences, preventing them from impeding the user. It finally improves all physical augmentations, enhances the resilience of the shielding and armour plating, and the antennae on the suit allow for improved signal interception.  
  
 _Samus' Notes:_  
  
One thing that the description doesn't talk about is how it also cancels out most of the sound of your footsteps, allowing you to sneak up on enemies you normally wouldn't be able to otherwise. Shouldn't take too long before I come across a situation where this helps out.  
  
 _Arne's Notes:_  
  
It's worth noting that only some of the energy will be absorbed into the batteries while most of the rest will still end up going into the shielding. It's mostly the damage that the shielding hardness manages to cancel out entirely from what I've been able to glean.

  
  
Mechanoids: Old Foe: Guardian: Combat Capable: Zakiriqt  
  
The Zakiriqt is a deadly combat machine created by the Old Foe to guard sites of importance that cannot afford to have a standard guard posted. Designed in the style of a predator from the Krazimak homeworld, the Zakiriqt moves in a highly stable multi-limbed configuration that makes it difficult to knock over. The Zakiriqt in its many modular varieties is most well known for its extreme speed and agility and the vast array of threats it can present to a target. This particular model carries a neural agoniser able to transmit pain signals through armour through hijacking the armour's link to the wearer as well as a Quasar gun that uses the accretion process of an artificial black hole to release enormously powerful jets. The Head is the most vulnerable portion of the Zakiriqt and should be focused upon to disable it as quickly as possible.  
  
 _Samus' Notes:_  
  
My current mark of power armour shouldn't even be able to be interfaced with the agoniser. I'll need to change up some access routing to prevent any similar events like this. Then I'll need to find out how it knew how to access into my armour.  
  
 _Arne's Notes:_  
  
We're pretty lucky that the Zakiriqt wasn't made quite to full Forbidden Wars standards. Or really, even close to it. Gods I'm trying to imagine what one from that era would even be like and every answer I can think of is horrible.

  
  
Upgrades: Armour: Physical Modifications: N'Kren Originated: Phantom Suit  
  
Using N'Kren ectophasic technology, the Phantom Suit allows for phasing partially out of conventional reality to pass through most objects uninhibited. While the conventional power suit and the user's progenitor blood already prevents phasing through to reach vulnerable organs, the Phantom Suit also allows for interacting with the incorporeal as if they were fully solid. Furthermore, the Phantom Suit makes the user impervious to most forms of dimensional instability events, allowing for previously inaccessible areas to be freely explored. The Phantom Suit additionally comes with improved stealth capability, cancelling out most of the sound that the user makes unless they wish to be heard and offering a silencing effect on all weapons. The Phantom suit augments all physical attributes of the armour and further bolsters the resilience of the plating and shielding, augmenting the rate that the plating and components can regenerate if damaged in particular through its usage of living metal.  
  
 _Samus' Notes:_  
  
Not only is the Phantom Suit one of the most useful armour upgrades I've been able to get so far, but it's also definitely one of my favourites in terms of appearance. I just kind of wish it also came in red or orange. I'd love to be able to take this into an exploration mission, though. I could reach so many new places.  
  
 _Arne's Notes:_  
  
The Phantom Suit is definitely going to be an incredibly useful armour for stealth operations. Being able to phase past most forms of defences not specifically designed to block phasic entities should be useful in most cases. Also, the hood looks really, really nice on me. It makes me feel like Robin Hood; if you'll pardon me referencing a classic.


	17. Forlorn: Aggrievance (SA & AS)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Samus, Arne, Spire, and Armaud join forces to take on the Sunstalker and Moonhunter to stop them from wiping out all life across the sector in their attempt to breach a seal they cannot hope to break.

_Sanctorial, Yldamir, Zoran_

  
The quartet had teleported as close as they were able, everyone quickly checking off their weapons before giving each other a quick nod. They had found themselves in a Faeran room, decorated with crystals and the elfin architecture of the fair ones. But already it was clearly twisted, repurposed in the more predatory manner of the Old Foe.  
  
Samus could feel the tension in the fabric of the cosmos, like someone pressing far too hard on a plastic film. The world was on a knife's edge, and every step she took into the rather plain room she took with caution. Crackling distortions arced their way into the air as she felt as much as heard a low, slowly building up hum. Inside her bones was the feeling of something looming over her, a pulsating drone of dread, but she steeled herself. The clock was ticking down, and so many lives depended on her. It was intimidating; the thought of how her mistakes could doom so many lives made her almost sick. So she had to win, for everyone's sake.  
  
Arne gulped. He knew there was something dreadful behind the door. He stilled the shaking he felt and breathed once again. He was able to do this; he had to be able to do this. Now was not the time for doubt, for indecision. If he couldn't do this, there was nobody else who could possibly move in time to save the people of the sector. A burning sensation in his throat told him he was nervous, and he sipped a bit on the sweet nectar-like liquid his suit offered him, a bit of a distraction to keep him from overthinking what he was about to throw himself into. They had a plan; their objectives were clear; they could win. They had to.  
  
"Everyone ready to go? We're not stopping for anything once we're heading out." Spire said as he clicked his arm cannon. The look on his face was one of such pride, infectious and celebratory satisfaction that they had managed to come so far.  
  
"We're ready." Samus said after confirming with Arne for only the briefest moment.  
  
Armaud shot the door ahead of them to let the four dive into the fray, legs carrying them as fast as they could. As soon as they crossed through, the foe had beset them.  
  
A swarm of serpentine machines, each the length of a truck and the height of a man disgorged themselves from hiding to strike down the four heroes. The Seklitoqs each sought to lash out with blackened rays of disintegrating energy that would break down the strong atomic force itself to reduce virtually all matter to quark-soup.  
  
Spire smashed one to pieces with an accelerated punch from his orb hand after uncurling from the Dialanche, the reverberating blow making the whole ground seem to shake. His hulking frame was already moving, every step made with heavy purpose as he tackled the next Seklitoq and smashed it into the other with a swing, clearing a path for Samus.  
  
Samus deflected a quintet of beams back into the nearest of her enemies with the shield she conjured from her left arm, her cannon shrieking to spit forth a blue-white ice spreader missile that engulfed the field in bitter anti-energy. A shoulder tackle shattered the frozen serpentine machine while she buzzed past another, letting her beam rake across its side.  
  
Arne shouted as he used his grapple beam to yank himself towards the now weakened Seklitoq, crashing into it in a dropkick that would have been audible across a nation. Bouncing off with a single kick, he levelled his cannon. His shock coil stabbed into the enemy just long enough for him to shift his arm-sword into a conventional hilt grip and jab it into the hole opened in the shielding. Another motion and he had bisected the machine, ducking below Armaud as she launched herself at the next foe.  
  
Armaud phased through the fire aimed in her direction, a ghostly wispy form passing through every incoming shot aimed their way before she became all too solid and real at the right moment. The buzzsaw of her green screw attack howled with angry, predatory energies into the shielding until it had shattered. Her cannon charged and then unleashed a roaring stream of green, corrosive power that ate into the snake-like machine with each successive blow until nothing was left but fizzling foam.  
  
The hall was filled with dozens of these machines, soon joined by hawk-like Yurakts, roughly manlike Uthaklats, and feline Zakateks. The aspects of Death, Storm, Moon, and Sun embodied in each of the four varieties of machines. But though they were powerful foes, the four together were a whirlwind blaze as they cut through to the next room; smashing down a wall with a speed booster charge from the young Samus.  
  
She felt the most incredible rush; the electric excitement of warfare and the furious tempo of battle made her heart almost seem to dance to the most intense music of her life. It was intoxicating, like a drug that made everything make sense. She almost feared losing herself to it, but she saw the objective as clearly as she saw the next Uthaklat swinging at her with a gravity maul. She was fighting to save people, and to show to herself that she could protect them the way she wasn't able to protect her mother. That gave her clarity.  
  
She caught the humanoid drone's arm in her grip and pulled it into a headbutt before stopping time altogether long enough to strike it with a fully charged beam and a power missile.  
  
Not enough of it was left even to notice what hadn't been destroyed. As the world began to move again, she was aware that she had a whole volley of trouble heading her way. Without missing so much as a single beat she phased through incoming blasts, moving with the practised ease of a dancer on a script.  
  
"Arne, heads up." She said as Arne duelled with another Zakiriqt that had emerged from above. Arne, already somewhat forewarned by his psychic senses, turned to see a dozen hawkish drones divebomb towards him. His blink pack carried him behind them, a whistle from him getting Spire's attention.  
  
"Good work with setting them against each other. Now knock them down." Spire said as the hawk drones slammed into their more scorpion-like counterpart, making it recoil long enough for Spire to tackle it off of its legs with an impact that sent a shockwave resounding through the room. His brute strength and power seemed at odds with his friendly, avuncular manner, but so much as a single glance could tell one that he was overjoyed to see his charges keep up with him.  
  
"Samus, thermal shock!" Spire said as he stacked his thermal beams into the Magmaul, an arcing glob of ultraheated magma crashing into the machine just as Samus dived below the swing of another machine. Not even blinking as Armaud stoved in her prior opponent's head, she charged up a shot with a weapon she had designed just for herself; the Cryolyte.  
  
Fusing her Ice Beam into it, the Cryolyte made ice form over her cannon just before it sent out a lance-like river of anti-energy infused cold plasma. The results of going from one extreme of the temperature scale to the next so viciously suddenly cracked open the Zakiriqt's shields and gave Arne a chance to soften it up with his positron beam infused shock coil.  
  
He could see the clock continuing to tick downwards. The endless hordes of machines thrown their way were nowhere near as strong as the single Zakiriqt they had fought before, but they didn't have to be he realised. They just had to waste time. Give the real obstacle enough time to beget disaster upon trillions of lives. His suit cleaned off the sweat that formed on his brow at the thought of that. No room for mistakes.  
  
"Armaud, Unferrite now! The anti-matter needs to bond with it to finish it off!" He shouted as the Zakiriqt started to turn towards him, his suit indicating he had taken a few hits from its hard light turrets. No time to worry about the shield loss he thought to himself.  
  
"Spire, cover me." Armaud said, deploying a shield of her own to block the shots aimed towards her. A single step turning herself around to send forth a stream of corroding power in hose like ropes into her foe. She looked upon the child with satisfaction as he charged his shock coil, ramping it up and shouting as the Zakiriqt's body exploded into a cascade of electricity.  
  
"Where did they even get all these robots?" Arne said, flinching only for the barest second before his temporal distort fired off to weave around what must have been a hundred lasers fired at him from all directions.  
  
"I have no idea. They must have gotten access to some kind of production facility. Someone had to have given them access, no way they could crack into all this security." Spire responded. A shinespark later and he had crashed into a particularly large Serpentine robot, keeling it over while he shielded Arne from a quasar blast, grunting as it pushed him backwards, feet skidding across the floor.  
  
Samus stepped in, using the shield to bounce the shot into the turret that had descended to strike them, severing it in half. "We're not going to get answers from any of these robots. We need to keep going. Not enough time to stand around and find out." Samus said.  
  
"Usually when we get this much resistance down one path, we're heading down somewhere the person in charge doesn't want us to. So we're at least on the correct path. Downside is that they'll know we're coming." Armaud said, picking up a mantid like Uharkit by its neck and decapitating it with a squeeze, punting its body into the formation of jaguar like mechanoids seeking to pounce at the trio, an appreciative nod coming from Spire.  
  
"There's just so many of them! How are we going to have enough time to beat the Sunstalker and Moonhunter and disarm the device at this rate?" Arne said. He knew someone would have an answer, but he just had to hear it. He was trying to run estimates, trying to crunch the numbers into a format he could wrap his head around. The figures didn't look amazing, it'd be a tight squeeze, but he was sure that they had a way to save at least a few seconds.  
  
"Because the trap master's on our side." Spire said, pointing out to the stream of Guardian machines that started to flood into the battlespace. From behind the swarming robots came a panoply of all the guardian machine varieties the two had fought on the way here. A parade of mechanical power and an elating if brief and limited window into what the commonwealth might have once looked like when it combined its resources.  
  
This was war, the last battle in a war that had ended nearly a hundred and twenty thousand years ago before man had ever realised that the stars were more than just lights in the night sky. A war fought with soldiers of metal and hearts of fire. A war that to the machines now waging it may as well have never been over as guardian and intruder clashed for supremacy.  
  
Under the direction of the Palatine Mind, the air lit up with every colour and resonated with every energy. Though the Palatine Mind's soldiers were largely unfeeling, though the quartet fighting alongside them academically knew that they were expendable machines, they felt their battle rage all the same. Programmed anger and outrage at the violation of what was supposed to be a sacred test of the inheritors drummed at their empathic senses like a marching beat.  
  
An anger matched by the desperation of their foe, one that resonated with their makers' longing to open doors meant to be forever shut. There were no attempts by the Old Foe robots to preserve themselves, no attempt to withdraw to safety or extend their operational service. They were given the gift of a hunger to do their duty to the end. It was almost honourable, Arne thought, but alas it was a duty he could never allow them to fulfil.

The machines had given way just enough to allow them to enter a chamber full of humming crystals whose energies gave the room an eerie blue tint. Energies that interacted with the powers being summoned by the two old foes in a manner that was teasing open breaks and drifting tears in reality. A warmech that had approached too close to one of the breaks without proper protection was simply swallowed in half, its legs dropping to the ground after being neatly severed.  
  
Samus flinched briefly at the sight but trusted in her armour to keep her safe. Even without the phantom suit, her armour and progenitor blood would always give her a chance at survival. With it, she dispelled all unease and started to push her way through.  
  
The fighting was intense, but with creative usage of the environment, it was considerably less of a problem than it might have otherwise been. Callouts and signals were handed out as needed, attacks coordinated as had been practised; slipping into a natural pattern even with the additional partners.  
  
Spire was the offence, providing his raw strength and firepower as was necessary. When he struck, his foe would fall and when he moved the path would clear. Armaud was the wall and shield, she would not be moved and could endure anything that was thrown in her direction as stoically as a mountain against the waves. Samus would control the engagement, freezing foes in place, preventing them from moving as they'd please or binding them with her many tools to prevent their action. Arne would provide support, using the energy he could siphon with his shock coil and redistributing it as needed to bolster their resilience or attacks while helping the others to focus down problematic foes.  
  
It was an almost stunningly effective team, each of their abilities complementing with one another. For Arne, it felt like family. Everything felt like it was sliding into place, and it all felt clear for once. He felt like he belonged somewhere, and for that moment, the boy knew for certain what he was. He was Arne Skjoldr, and he was going to help save the sector.  
  
He cut his way through what seemed like thousands of enemies, going from one hot spot to the next as they ducked through the increasingly unstable fields of reality. He, for a time, forgot that he was staring at the universe collapsing in the local area at the simple possibility of the device going off. He forgot that the obstacles he vaulted over were impossible things and fractal patterns wandering in from planes of existence whose dossiers read more like advisory warnings than articles.  
  
Samus calling his attention back to the here and now got his focus back where it should be, directly ahead of him. He swung himself beneath the jabbing fractal spear of a humanoid Izakilt, the edge of the spear hissing with sundered particles and cleaved directions of space. He took the second spear from another drone of the same type on the shoulder, ignoring the impact to his defences and produced his sword.  
  
The motion was quick, not easy. He encountered surprising resistance as his blade cut into overlapping and reinforced shielding. He felt himself briefly pushed back until he redoubled his momentum. Hundreds of the machines were trying to throw him back with a spearline, and the foe threatened to stop their progress. He saw the organisation and oneness with which they moved and he could feel his mind alight with an analysis. But he was overthinking and swinging too little, finding himself pressed backwards with every foe he felled being replaced almost as quickly.  
  
"Hold on Arne, don't get too into it." Armaud said, looking with concern as Arne sought to engage the spear line himself even while a bedlam of robotic warfare raged around him. He was taking hits, his shielding was ticking downwards and his footing was starting to become loose.  
  
She stepped in, body heavy with her mass and her shoulder crashing into dozens of foes. Her presence commanded attention, a gauntlet cast that the machines could not ignore as they sought to do battle with the living metal titanness. Her own shield, a metal construct emerged from her free arm to form an ovular shape that sparked with dozens of impacts.  
  
Arne looked upon her with reverence and nodded, understanding that he still had things to learn as he joined her in the shield wall, lashing out with his weapons alongside her. The nod of approval that he got from her meant the world to him, and the feeling of having a chance to learn from such an elder made him inspired to do his best.  
  
Like a rock, the waves of the foe broke around them, and like a ship they pushed through the waters of the enemy, a wake of corpses behind them. But with Spire busy clearing out a flank they were still fighting against the ocean no matter how much of the seemingly thousands deep phalanx they were cutting through. Arne had even stopped looking at his kill counter after it passed five digits in a matter of minutes. They needed to break open this formation if they wanted to get through.  
  
But an orange flash of Samus sawing straight through one of the larger machines with the screw attack while Spire threw another into an opening tear gave him an idea.  
  
"Samus, ice power bomb! I'll keep them busy." He said, getting a nod from her as she jumped off of a falling giant of a now decapitated machine. Ever graceful as she always was, Samus curled into her morph ball and fired off a boost charge to crash amidst the field like a comet.  
  
What followed next was something she could never grow tired of. The sensation of unleashing such destruction simply because she willed it. Augmented by the energies of her charged ice beam, the cryo-blast expanded in a massive sphere around herself, set to ignore her allies while tearing through all obstacles.  
  
Even the air solidified into a crystalline state as all energy present condensed into icy matter and anything that wasn't solid froze as hard as could ever be done. She looked on that work with pride, and Spire was soon there to follow up her work with a fiery pulse emitted from his collision with the ground to vaporise the frozen enemies. He was never one to pass up opportunities when they came by him after all, and so many statue still targets seemed incredibly tempting to him.  
  
Standing himself out of his pose, Spire gave the other three a nod and a thumbs up formed out of his orb hand. "Excellent work there." He said, patting the two kids on the shoulder. The two responded positively, leaning a bit into the pats and glowing in the praise. It was nice to be so accepted by someone they looked up to.  
  
As they started to get moving again, Samus spotted something unusual. The tears caught in the blast had been sealed completely shut. She stopped for only a second to look at the odd sight before turning her head back to the ground and passing on what she'd seen.  
  
"Sounds like you've got a way to disarm the device I think." Arne said, giving her an eager nod after giving the information a roll around in his mind. This news made him feel more at ease, the worm of coiled tension easing its constriction slightly around him.  
  
"Good job, but wait until we're in range before celebrating." Armaud said as she charged up a missile and smashed down the section of wall in front of them. It was time to finish this. Every step Armaud took reiterated that point, any further rounds she took were simply ignored. They couldn't threaten her and she would let no further opposition slow her down.  
  
The streams of enemies began to thin at last, the Palatine Mind turning the entirety of the planet's production towards excising this cancer that had infested it for too long. The thickets of robots fighting around them were no longer particularly concerned with them, and the way ahead was clearer than it had ever been before.  
  
"So do we have a plan for when we take them on?" Arne said, his eyes flicking over to the two elders as the hatchling and neophyte trailed behind the eruption and the citadel.  
  
"I don't want either of you taking hits for us unless necessary. If you're forced out of your suits, pull back until you can resummon them. Don't take them lightly, not even for a second." Armaud said calmly as she approached one of the last barriers between them and their objective. A great wall shimmering with a complex web of energies and dimensional distortion fields meant to keep out most possible interlopers.  
  
"That's not a plan." Samus said as she scanned at the barrier. It'd require a complex set of energies and pressures to break down, but a quick glance at everyone else's arsenals gave her an idea of how to breach it.  
  
"In a fight like this, too much can happen to make detailed contingencies all that valuable. But stick together, and we can handle this." Spire said reassuringly as Arne gulped beneath his helmet. Spire pulled Arne in a bit close and looked down at him like a proud father.  
  
"I mean...if you say so. I'm just...this is all pretty big for us no? I wasn't expecting something like this so soon." Arne said with a nervous laugh that Spire joined in with.  
  
"Arne, it's better to get used to the big scale operations early on than be thrown into one without warning. You can do this, I know you'll make me proud." Spire said warmly, laying his hand on Arne's helmet and ruffling the hood a bit.  
  
"Aren't you scared, even a little?" Samus asked, clenching her fist briefly.  
  
"It wouldn't be a job that would need us to handle it if it didn't make us a little scared Samus. But if you want to be a hero, you have to learn to control that fear." Armaud said, getting an understanding nod out of the young girl.  
  
"We'll need to use our augmented affinity weapons to crack that barrier. Once we're through well, we're ready for this fight aren't we?" Samus said, starting to charge up her Cryolyte, a nod coming from Arne as he charged up his shock coil, followed by Spire's Magmaul and Armaud's Toxolyst. White, Blue, Orange, and Green combined into one extravagant shot.  
  
The energies twisted, tined and then fused into a combination of contradictions that proved more than the sum of its parts. The power shrieked and roared against the fluctuating barriers, striking it at multiple levels of existence. Defences that could have easily sat comfortably at the heart of a star began to crack and then fail. Too much to resist, too much to adapt to.  
  
The barrier shattered like glass, a loud ping echoing across and making everyone who had to witness it briefly back off. They soon had their focus dead on ahead, the door that had sought to keep them away had now been broken open.  
  
They gazed then, through the plasma fog that had boiled into the air in the wall that had been eradicated by the combined shot into the primary chamber where they finally caught sight of the winged frames of the two old foes.  
  
The ancient enemies turned their heads around, one slightly felinid in the sense that a jaguar was catlike, the other ever so vaguely reminiscent of a wolf to Samus' eyes. Of course, this was all likely her eyes playing tricks on her, forming patterns of recognition where none existed. Both were utterly alien, their forms baring only the mildest resemblance to any animal she found familiar.  
  
But something was indeed completely impossible to mistake. The sheer malice that they held for her. The anguish of being so close to their attempt to achieve their task only to be confronted with the four of them could be felt like a physical, palpable thing that she could touch. Anguish turned to anger, and anger translated into hostility as a roar like the results of dicing up the sounds of a jaguar, a blender, and metal knives on chalk let rip from the Sunstalker's helm.  
  
The moonhunter let out an awful howl, one that made her feel like ear drums were being drilled into, her teeth grinding against each other out of irritation as the sound passed into pitches no normal human could ever hear but ones she heard as clear as day. But this was no empty challenge, it was a declaration of intent to strike down the interlopers who would seek to stop them when they were so close.  
  
She was shaking, this was it. A fight with the two at long last. She checked the timer. They had been forced to waste seven minutes already, and less than a half-hour remained for them to put a foe like this down. Hopefully it would be plenty of time. She didn't want to think about what would happen if it wasn't.  
  
Armaud rested a hand on her shoulder, getting a nod out of her to reassure her. At first, she thought it was as if the N'Kren could sense her doubts and worries, but then she realised that was exactly it. "We're all in this together. Don't hold back now." She said. Stress melted off of Samus' shoulders, not all of it, but enough for her to let out a cool exhale and reopen her eyes with her foe in mind.  
  
And despite herself, she found her hand briefly squeezing Arne's own, having not even been aware she had reached out to him until he glanced towards her. He was scared too. Anyone sane would be scared of facing the two juggernauts in front of them. But fear can be an ally as much as it can be a foe. Contempt for an enemy was never a good thing.  
  
The two Old Foes seemed to be almost as conflicted as they were, almost as if they doubted their chances of success. They were discovered, they were known. Their attempts at sealing off communications had failed and now the universe would be coming down on them. But they were cornered with no other recourse, and the Sunstalker started to open its portals once again.  
  
Killer light emerged from the portal, dodged around even as it formed into almost florid patterns of unleashed solar flares concentrated into beam form. The fight was on now.

Each solar lance roared out of its gate with the quartet's danger sense just about screaming at them to get out of the way. Sun-yellow lances of fusion ejecta streamed out a hair's breadth under light speed, twisting and turning from the portals they were summoned from as their gates rotated to try and strike down their foes.  
  
The four scattered in an instant to avoid presenting an easy target to the storm of solar ejecta as its counterpart leapt into action, claws extended from its combat arms.  
  
Samus sensed the stabbing sensation of immediate danger and phased through the floor just in time to avoid the crackling sizzle of its fractal edged claws. A snarl reverberated through her as she felt the sheer white-hot fury of the vaguely lupine Old Foe, its secondary arms trying to reach for her through the floor before she fired off the blink pack to get behind.  
  
Spire jumped into the fray, rolling into his Dialanche and sending forth his rocky exterior around his crystalline core to shred into the Moonhunter. Joining in with an ice spreader missile straight into the Moonhunter, she smirked at the sight of Spire sending explosive currents of heat energy into his orb hand and throwing a volcanic punch that made the enemy hit the ceiling. It would have continued higher, but it shifted gravity once more and landed down, slamming its hands down and releasing a shockwave.  
  
As Armaud bulldozed through the Solar flares spat into her, she saw Arne shouting with determination as he launched himself in screw attack form at the back of the Sunstalker. A smile formed on her metallic face as she started to glow with the energy she had absorbed from her enemy.  
  
At the exact moment Arne had jumped back and released a power pulse in his alt-mode, enveloping the Stalker in its destructive radiance, she funnelled the absorbed energy into her cannon and let rip. The Sunstalker growled in outrage as it was thrown back by its own energies, flashing its wings forward to absorb the impact.  
  
With its wings blazing, the Sunstalker took on a form of light and rammed into Armaud hard enough to take even her off of her feet; Arne's shout of alarm being followed by him sprinting in their direction.  
  
He ducked beneath a swing of the horizon blade of the Moonhunter as it clashed with Samus' own arm-sword, making her buckle beneath the overwhelming pressure right up until she shot into its face with a power missile from her extended cannon.  
  
He spun on his feet, slowing down time to leech energy from the monstrosity with his shock coil and then feed Spire with he could take just as the Diamont started to stand up from having been smashed through the floor. That should help him get onto his feet.  
  
Right as Armaud was once again locking arms with the Sunstalker, he skidded into a boosted slide and smashed into its leg with a nimbus of red energy around himself. An impact that would have broken a mountain got the Stalker to simply lose its footing for a moment, and he rolled beneath its Sunaxe as it came chopping down towards him. More than a little too close he thought, staring at the burning yellow energy.  
  
"Having a bit of trouble there?" Armaud said as her sickle-blade lashed out with a quick uppercutting motion, a howl emerging from the monster right before the Moon Hunter was sent crashing into it from behind, thrown off its feet by Samus and then catapulted by Spire. The impact reverberated around the room and pushed the Sunstalker onto its knees while the four surrounded them, opening fire as they pleased.  
  
Portals opened once again, sucking in the incoming shots and then giving way to the pillars of light of its preferred weapon. Samus took one head on and crossed her arms to take the impact, her shielding protesting from the impact briefly before she rolled her head. The full force of the Solar flare wasn't a pleasant impact, but she'd live and her eyes set themselves on the Moonhunter. Firing away at it with missile fire to catch its attention while it bent space to send a storm of relativistic projectiles at Arne to throw him aside. She needed to get the two to separate.  
  
Her grapple beam lashed out, her teeth gritted and she strained to try and get the thing to move. Tectonic force made the ground tremble beneath her boots as she resolidified. But the Moonhunter would not shift even as the earth rumbled, turning towards her entirely of its own volition.  
  
She felt that sharp tinge of worry as the Moonhunter grabbed at the grapple tendril to pull her towards it. She moved towards the machine, flying off of her feet while her cannon charged by reflex. She grunted as the Moonhunter grabbed her by the throat with its secondary arms and felt herself shake as it started to squeeze. Okay, this was not the best plan she's ever had.  
  
Her shielding started to drain as the secondary arm clenched itself, the other three busy with the Sunstalker behind it. its glowing eyes peered into hers, hatred evident even in the featureless lights that glared into her. Unflinching as the pale glow of the moon, as blinding as an arsenal of spotlights. She tried to break open the grasp, but found the grip as solid as its atom crunching pressure.  
  
She focused and shot herself behind the Moonhunter with her own teleportation system, wrist gun raking its backside with cryonic weapons followed by a barrage from her munitions launcher. Finally, a charged shot stabbed from her cannon. The foe was frozen briefly, covered in a thick layer of anti-energy produced ice, but it broke out just as suddenly while her thrusters fired up to get her some distance.  
  
Damn, she thought. This was going to be quite a lot of work.  
  
She felt a tether of grapple energy latch onto her back, and smiled to see her energy counter ticking over with refilling energy tanks. "Thanks Arne!" She said as the boy tried to slash at the Moonhunter's legs with his blade, making it flinch at the impact before she followed up with a rapid-fire staccato of super missiles that even the Moonhunter had to back away from. Okay, if they could just keep that pressure up...  
  
"Sorry, got a bit distracted." Arne said before throwing out a temporal stop bubble at the Moonhunter. It'd only hold them briefly, but it was just enough, he felt to get a proper barrage of shots streaming out towards it. The pair lit up the edges of the bubble with thousands of shots that stopped just at the edge of the transluscent blue skin before jumping out of the way as normal time resumed for the Hunter, knocking it clear across the room.  
  
The Old Foe picked itself off the ground in its crumpled position and flexed its wings. Children would not best it, it would not allow this to be the end. The two's eyes widened with surprise as its clawed hand extended and then crunched inwards; collapsing nearby matter into a short-lived black hole with its powers over gravity. Tossing it like a softball, it did not aim the raging singularity at them; their gravity boosts would have negated its effects. It was instead aimed behind them, drawing in nearby objects at incredible speeds to bombard them with projectiles.  
  
The vortex expanded and drank in matter in an attempt to live, all things falling into its blinding event horizon that briefly singed Arne's shielding before he pulled out of the immediate danger zone. Already his cannon at the ready as he tried to avoid peeling floor tiles, the feedback from the near encounter with the vortex drawing a grunt from him. Samus was struck by a series of rubble flung at her at relativistic speeds, the impact making her crumple downwards briefly before she decided that she might as well get close.  
  
Smashing into the moon hunter with a shinespark tackle, she shouted an old Chozo war cry "KE-MAT SAKH!" as she slammed into her foe. But just before it could catch her in a handclap, she stopped time herself and teleported behind, flipping herself around and hammering into its back with carefully aimed imperialist lasers, stabbing into the shielding just over its wings.  
  
Time resumed and the crimson light slammed into it, staggering it just enough for Armaud to pull its face in with her own grapple tether into a devastating knee that felt like a seismically significant event. Okay, Samus thought as Armaud uppercutted into her far larger opponent's neck with her other hand and then lifted it over head. "That's incredible." Samus muttered before Armaud piledrove its head into the floor.  
  
The Sunstalker was not even close to finished however, and with a telekinetic tug; yanked its sibling out of the ground. It gargled something in its nearly incomprehensible language before its wings arched and then flapped forward to send blazing orange spheres of supercritical energy. The first exploded just as she was trying to avoid laser beams of lunar white light shot out of every crevice of the Moonhunter's wings, its energy washing over her and getting a pained groan out of her just as she managed to phase out. She saw for a moment, nothing but white light as her armour's shielding protested from the miniature supernova reaction that had just gone off in her face, but she persevered, panting slightly.  
  
Arne bowled over, strobing bolts of yellow energy riddling his armour as he was sent into a roll and wearily picked himself up. Not enough time to avoid an incoming Nova sphere that smashed him clean out of the battlespace entirely, her alarm made audible as her eyes went wide. "Arne! No!" She shouted, teleporting after him to find him wearily flipping onto his stomach.  
  
"Are you alright Arne?" She said, shoving off some debris that had fallen on him that weighed more than a tank with the ease of snapping her fingers. She knelt down to him and offered her his hand, her scan visor frantically going over his state. She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw that he was fine, just slightly disoriented.  
  
"I've had...worse...honest." Arne said, wincing and huffing before pushing himself up. The two looked towards the battlezone and saw the Elders in their deadly dance with the two Old Foes, trading blow after blow. They were going nowhere fast, shielding was regenerating, armour was nowhere close to being breached. The foe was fighting them to a standstill, which meant that they were failing; the clock ticking downwards ever more ominously. Arne exhaled at that thought, looking downwards.  
  
"There needs to be something more that can be done...we need...we need more firepower, a weakness, something to take advantage of or...I don't know, reinforcements? We're just pounding each other in the face and getting nowhere." Arne said rubbing at the facemask of his helmet and closing his eyes as he strained to think for a few seconds. Seconds that felt like an eternity; the amount of gear he had on him was incredible, more than he ever had and probably more than he'd be bringing to most missions. But yet despite everything he had on him he couldn't think of any one thing that would help them out.  
  
"Maybe if we could get enough of the drones to pull away from the rest of the fighting we could make a dent? Or call on some help from the surface? I'm sure with communications restored we could get in touch with someone." Samus said, pursing her lips and pondering things as she urged Arne back towards the fight, offering him her hand once again and smirking when he squeezed it.  
  
"Involving lower-grade combatants seems like a bad idea, they'd just get killed in something like this. The drones might be worth it, though." He said with an agreeing nod.  
  
"Who says they'd need to stay lower grade?" She said with raised eyebrows beneath her helmet.  
  
"Are you sugg-...oh man we are going to get into so much trouble." Arne said as he realized what she was suggesting and just imagining the grin beneath her helmet.

_Grey Voice's Chamber, Chozodia, Zebes_

A connection made with technology, magic, and psionics in equal measure formed across the gulf of time and space, across galaxies and into the very heart of Zebes where Grey Voice was busily fine-tuning a device with his gauntleted fingers. Somek-Ka's eyes narrowed somewhat as he felt the signal, and he turned to the direction Samus would have been if she were there in person. There he saw a projection of her, translucent and morphable, an image conjured by his mind to make the conversation a bit more natural.  
  
"-You must be desperate Aira. It's rare for you to speak to me directly.-" Grey Voice said without skipping a beat as he twisted in the last components and looked at his work with pride. Letting the machine he had created go free and nodding as its repulsors came to life, he almost seemed to study her across the distance, tilting his head a bit.  
  
"-Somek, the Old Foe is here! They're preparing a device to break open the seal. But it won't work, it'll just destroy everything in a hundred-parsec radius. But we don't have enough firepower to put them down.-" Samus said, getting Grey Voice to snap his head towards her as if she had slapped him.  
  
"-Why was I not informed of this? I had already dispatched Ghor to your aid when communications were lost, what exactly is going on?-" He said, his voice hard as diamonds and as cold as her ice beam. She could sense his anger, a cold, wintery thing. A tempered rage rather than something hot and fiery like hers.  
  
"-This data packet should explain everything. We've not got a lot of time. We need to just...would it be possible to loan some artifacts to some Federation Marines and a Freelancer here?-" She asked, trying her best to get to the point. "-If we had more time I'd have asked papa first to convince you, but I'm in a rush right now so please, please tell me you can make this exception just once!-" Samus pleaded, her spiritual contact form clasping its hands together .  
  
"-Do Spire and Armaud agree?-" Grey Voice asked before Arne's astral form flickered in front of him, getting a raised brow from the Chozo. It was rare for the Neophyte to speak to him of all Chozo, given that the boy always found him to be a bit intimidating. His stare made him uncomfortable, and he briefly flinched when he saw the Chozo's hard gaze focused squarely on him.  
  
"-Yeah, I just spoke to them, but we're kind of in the middle of a fight right now. Focusing on this conversation and the fight is a little rough.-" Arne said with a bit of a desperate edge to his voice.  
  
"-It must truly be dire if you are taking enough time away from trying to sneak away with Aira when you're supposed to be training to engage in "youthful indiscretion" to speak with me.-" Somek said with a tone that made Arne profoundly unsure of whether or not he was being serious or simply having a bit of fun at his expense. He felt his cheeks go hot as Samus tried to avert her eyes and cleared her throat.  
  
"-Could we please not do this here and now? There are plenty of other times for you to be upset about our relationship. And we really, really don't have the time for this.-" Arne said, wincing as his form flickered a bit from taking a hit in the physical world before he shook his head and groaned.  
  
"-Yeah this is...absolutely not the right moment to have this conversation. So can we please get back on topic?-" Samus said, harrumphing to make her intentions clear.  
  
"-You did not let me finish speaking.-" Grey voice said, extending a hand to signal the two of them to stop talking.  
  
"-I know you to be many things Sarxyl,-" He said coldly in a way that made Arne gulp hard as he felt a chill down his back even as he tensed a bit with displeasure and restrained anger at the usage of his Alimbic name. "-But a liar has never been one of them. So be it.-" He said as part of his mind was already working on sending the necessary summons.  
  
"-Then we have only the Alimbics to seek the approval of. One moment please.-" Grey Voice said before the translucent purple form of Deglos manifested almost immediately. Her bright yellow eye and her paladin armour looked intimidating to Arne even in this ghostly form; rounded pauldrons guarding her shoulders and a triple-bladed war-crest on her head.  
  
"-So, you have encountered the Old Foe for the first, and hopefully last time then?-" She said, clearly already in the know from Grey Voice's summons for her. Arne gave a nod, followed by Samus. Deglos was hard on him most of the time, strict and always with high expectations, yet always fair. He just hoped the old Paladin would grant him this at least.  
  
"-Based on the data you've given us, you are right. There isn't much time. Yet there are rules for a good reason, children.-" She said, looking towards Grey Voice and then towards the two human hybrids.  
  
"-If we give them a taste of progenitor technology they will want more. Word of Zoran will spread, and the scavengers will never leave it alone.-" She said, folding her arms and giving a hard look towards Grey Voice.  
  
"-You are of course, correct Paladin Deglos. There are drawbacks to this plan.-" Grey voice said, hiding his hands into the sleeves of the robes he wore over his armour.  
  
Samus' blood started to boil while Arne began to feel sick. Samus clenched her fist and Arne choked back a remark. They weren't happy to hear that by any means.  
  
"-The promise of its technology would be far too much for them to resist. Protocol would more than allow for the sacrifice of the sector to maintain overall universal peace.-" Deglos said, a horrified gasp coming from Arne followed by an outraged scream from Samus.  
  
"-Are you...serious? We can't just let these people die! We can't just abandon the sector to its fate! You told me there would be no more Cylosises!"- Arne stammered, feeling that nauseating unease start to boil over into genuine anger. He didn't raise his voice too much for fear of Deglos' stare, but he made sure he was heard. Not so much for Samus.  
  
"-I CANNOT BELIEVE YOU! HUNDREDS OF TRILLIONS OF PEOPLE ARE GOING TO DIE AND YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT PROTOCOL!?-" She screamed in a way that made even the ancient Veteran pause her train of thought. "-YOU UNBELIEVABLE BASTARD! YOU GUTLESS COWARD! YOU HONOURLESS IDIOT!-" She shouted, getting Deglos to do a double-take at the girl as anger curled off of her like tongues of fire.  
  
She could keep going with the insults all day, and would in fact, do so. That much was immediately obvious to Somek-Ka who decided to preempt the inevitable barrage of increasingly heated language by raising his hand.  
  
"-She has a point. As much as protocol matters, we also have a duty of care. We can intercede to stop this reckless destruction by fellow progenitors who meddle with things they cannot master. Thus, we must.-" Somek-Ka said, glancing briefly at Samus to make sure she calmed down slightly and feeling the cooling sensation of relief when he saw her inhaling and puffing out her cheeks rather than belting out another shout.  
  
"-And what will we do with the inevitable treasure seekers? Do we just mindwipe the ones who were not supposed to be there?-" Deglos said, loosening her arms and letting them fall to her sides as her neckless head turned back towards Grey Voice.  
  
"-No! No mind wipes! You are not messing with peoples memories over something they can't control! Or so help me I am going to kick your floating head off!-" Samus interjected, lurching forward and giving Deglos her hardest, most intimidating stare possible.  
  
"-She's right. It's not fair to mess with their memories just because they were pulled in here by the Old Foes' dimensional tests. We can move the planet right?-" Arne said, opening his arms a bit.  
  
"-Yes, that would be a logical resolution. We will of course, purge their computers of any recorded data regarding the integration of our artifice once the emergency passes. But it would be a simple matter to relocate Zoran's star system to a different, less travelled galaxy.-" Somek-Ka said, rubbing his beak in thought briefly and giving a gracious nod.  
  
"-You're...agreeing with me?-" Arne said, almost in disbelief, lowering his shoulders and raising an eyebrow just as Samus did a double-take between the two of them.  
  
"-Yeah that's, pretty rare actually!-" Samus said, tilting her head at Grey Voice who waved their confusion off and looked directly between the two of them without staring at either one in particular.  
  
"-My disapproval of your romantic distractions from your duties does not mean I find you inherently disagreeable, Sarxyl. I simply think you're too young to be opening your heart so thoroughly when you still have much to learn.-" Grey Voice said, shaking his head.  
  
"-And as for you Aira. While I might not approve of all of your decisions, you are still ultimately your own person. I cannot stop you from chasing what you desire, merely push you towards righteous paths. You're starting to be just a child no longer, I shan't be too strict.-" He said calmly, closing his eyes beneath his helm and giving a serene nod.  
  
"-He does have a point. You are both of you, starting the transition to adulthood. Part of adulthood's gift is the gift of choice. Zurvduat might disagree, but I believe that you need to forge your own identity. I will just help you on that path.-" Deglos said, her voice becoming surprisingly soft as she mellowed her tone to something a bit less reminiscent of the hardened Paladin she was normally thought of as being.  
  
"-Tell me, Sarxyl, Aira, do you truly believe that the people of this sector are worth it? Will you speak before Zurvduat about it?-" Deglos asked, looking with concern at Samus groaning from another hit in the physical world, her image flickering a bit from the distraction as she fought her foe.  
  
The decision wasn't a hard one, but came with a pause. The thought of justifying himself before Zurvduat made him choke on his words, causing his first attempt at speaking to die in his throat. But he remembered for a moment, the terror of being swept up in things he couldn't stop, and the bell-like cackle of that monster flashed in his memory and made that choice for him.  
  
"-I...yes. If we don't make a choice to save these people, what good are we? Why even give us these powers, these relics if we can't use them to save this many people?-" Arne said, standing prouder and bolder than before, he still feared the idea of justifying this to Zurvduat, but he had made up his mind.  
  
Samus had her own hard memories. Fire, heat, wings of purple and guttural roars by marauding armies. She recalled that fall from heaven, and the ash and dust all around her. She remembered calling out for help only for no one to come for so long. Nobody should suffer like that. Not when she now had the ability to do something about it.  
  
"-You want us to save the universe right? To make it a better place? If we just pull back, let this happen because of protocol and regulation; what kind of heroes would we even be? I know the rules, but right now, I just don't care.-" Samus said, standing up to Arne's side and stepping closer to Somek-Ka and Deglos' psicomm avatars as the two ancients looked towards one another and nodded.  
  
"-It is agreed, we will inform the Palatine Mind of Zoran of this straight away. Then we will find why the security feeds aren't showing us this conflict. Someone will need to give us answers.-" Grey Voice said, making a mystic gesticulation to send his word of approval from his location all the way to Zoran.  
  
"-And the two of you, one last thing before you go.-" Deglos said, looking down at the pair.  
  
"-Yes?-" Arne asked.  
  
"-Arne, come on, we need to get back into it!-" Samus said, already turning away.  
  
"-Give the Old Foe a taste of the New Fire.-" She said with a small hint of pride.

_Sysathi Hangar, Zoran_

  
"Okay, people let's get moving, injured first." Lieutenant Lyraman shouted over the din of armoured boots walking towards the safety of the Hangar, Stygak looking over the procession while Mendelle sat and began panting. Lyraman eyed the canine-like animal as she turned her head over and woofed briefly, then looked back at a wounded soldier stumbling forward, hand over a rent in his suit over the shoulder that the nanosalve had barely patched up.  
  
"Easy there trooper you just got your arse kicked ten ways a million ways down the cycle." She said, helping him onto his feet and onto a stretcher provided by one of the medics.  
  
Removing her helmet and sighing, the dark-skinned woman sat down on a nearby bench as she turned her gaze skywards, the ceiling seemed so distant from her head for a place that was so empty. It almost felt like a waste.  
  
Almost. Save for those four gunships parked in a section of the hangar.  
  
The Diamont and N'Kren gunships were familiar to her. They were owned by Spire and Armaud. Such powerful instruments of aerospace warfare were something she'd never really gotten to see up close before. A sight that got a little bit of an awed gasp from her, being so close to something she'd only seen online in such reverential tones got her thinking.  
  
The other two though, she didn't recognise, save for that the red one was of Chozo design and the other one was of...Alimbic origin.  
  
"So what's a brand new ship made by a species that's been dead for ten thousand years doing here anyway?" One of the Marines, healthy enough to be still standing, said. Her horizontal, saurian posture holding her body over her sickle toe-claws as they tapped against the floor.  
  
"I dunno Sekelesh, might be a drone ship? Old Alimbic space is crawling with mechanoids." The other said, this one an Aelva with his helmet removed, pointed ears twitching slightly once they were free of his helm and a gauntleted hand running through his blue hair before he shrugged.  
  
"Can't be, that thing's made to be manned. It's got a cockpit and everything with a seat." Sekelesh said, shaking her head at his words.  
  
"I mean, whatever it is, we're supposed to gather near it for a bit. Not sure how long we'll have to wait until we get a pick-up." Lyraman said, sighing while Mendelle tilted her head at her in confusion and let out a small whine. Unable to resist, Lyraman patted the furry thing on the head and got an excited pant in response.  
  
"Might not be too long actually, we're getting a signal approaching fast. It's G-" Corporal Aisha managed before a large metallic shape swept into the room through the open hangar door, stubby wings and a somewhat pod-like form indicating it was a gunship, albeit a small one. Then she got a closer look at it and saw that it had legs folded into it and that the chrome body was righting itself rapidly to extend what were not landing gears, but hooved feet before the whole thing met the ground with a heavy thud.  
  
"...Ghor." Lyraman said as she stammered at the thought of being within touching distance of such a living legend. The Cyborg's mechanical battlemech glowed lightly in runic patterns with a series of unusual augments, Chozo gifts she figured. She felt a bit envious, the green monster making itself known as she wistfully wondered what it would be like to hold that much power. Intoxicating, no doubt.  
  
"That would be me alright. You all will need to clear out as soon as possible, this business is out of your paygrade I'm afraid." Ghor said, eyeing Stygak briefly and nodding his head in the recess he hooked himself into his mech through.  
  
"You're quite far from your usual stomping grounds, aren't you? Got lost?" Ghor said, his aggressive, baritone voice almost menacing. Definitely snarky, there was a hard edge to the second sentence that made Stygak snort through his nostrils.  
  
"I suppose so. This is all a bit beyond me. Haven't got the firepower for this kind of fight, as much as I don't like to say it." Stygak growled before a hovering Alimbic eye drone floated in front of the menagerie of people gathered.  
  
"Hello, I am Palatine Mind designated Quizalas. I am authorised to inform you that I am able to help with your firepower situation for a temporary duration." The Drone said, translating the Palatine Mind's signals through its speakers in a friendly, gender-neutral voice that had a slight digital echo to itself.  
  
"As your systems were not designed to be compatible with the equipment I am about to provide, you will not be able to retain them once I disable compatibility mode. However, given the present circumstances, your assistance is required." The Drone said, hovering in front of Stygak and then Lyraman and the other marines, zipping between objects of interest with ease.  
  
There was a sudden wave of murmuring throughout the gathered marines as they spoke excitedly amongst themselves. Even a brief opportunity to make use of progenitor technology? Here? Now? What in the name of the founders could they need people like them for? Why was an Alimbic palatine mind recruiting them? All these questions and more passed through the thousand or so troopers remaining.  
  
"And why do you need our help?" Lyraman asked.  
  
"The entities that attacked you are attempting to breach a transversal seal meant to isolate a pocket reality from all other possible existences." The Palatine Mind reported blankly in a friendly manner that seemed entirely at odds with Lyraman's ideas of what a standard sentence should ever be like. She stared hard and blinked as if that would dispel what she was hearing before realising it was all too real.  
  
"They will not succeed, but their attempt will result in a moderate scale dimensional crash event that will instantly annihilate all unprotected matter and energy within a hundred parsec radius within twenty-three minutes. After the initial event, the area of influence will expand to a final radius of a thousand parsecs." At least one person in the middle of having a drink ended up spitting it out in surprise while Lyraman's heart felt like it had stopped and Stygak almost bit down on his own tongue in shock.  
  
"Though the slowdown of the second expanding wave should fortunately provide you with time to evacuate after the initial event, reducing the likely casualties to a total of ninety six trillion, four hundred and seventy one bill-." The Synthetic Consciousness started before Ghor waved them off. Every number Quizalas rattled off seemed to deaden the mood of the room a bit more, and Ghor's harrumphing came like the mercy of the angels.  
  
"Perhaps let's not worry them too much with the details, yes?" Ghor said with a growl that the Drone clearly understood as a sign to shut up as quickly as possible. He had already run the numbers and had no need of being told how much was at stake.  
  
"Okay hold on, so those two things have the kind of tech where just two people can make a device with the juice to frag an entire sector by accident?" Lyraman said, shaking her head and standing up to make herself heard to the Drone. Even before she finished that sentence though, the machine rotated to face her as if it knew she was going to speak. A single breath later, it was already in her face, studying her with its monocular gaze as if it had teleported from its position.  
  
"That would be correct. I am also authorised to treat your wounded and repair damaged equipment immediately, should you be so inclined as to accept this offer. Please do understand that time is of the essence." Quizalas said through its avatar, hovering slightly back away from her to give her some breathing space. Exhaling in relief, she straightened herself and loosened some of the tension in her muscles.  
  
"I...okay how fast can we suit up?" Lyraman said, getting an intensified glow in her face in response that felt as warm as daylight that prompted her to slide her helmet back on as soon as possible.  
  
"Now!" She got in response as a nimbus of light flowed through the room out of every corner and crevice. Injuries as severe as missing limbs or brain death were repaired by a stream of nanites dispensed by the caretaker drones that had flown inside.  
  
Dancing like pixies, the orbs of lift circled every individual and vehicle they could find before flowing inside with what almost sounded like excited giggling. Her armour began to glow and her fingers straightened out as she looked at her hand in awe, her HUD giving her a lengthy readout of excited data-chatter.  
  
She herself gasped in surprise as the armour began to transform, her body alive with electric sensation as a warmth suffused her. Her movements felt more comfortable, more fluid; more robust. The details on the surface of the floor were crisp to the point where she could make out the smallest motes of dust at full zoom. The shielding shimmered around her, lattices of power and dimensional warps binding around her and spider-webbing into something more powerful yet invisible.  
  
She felt herself in the air, her body weightless and the light glowing until her armour seemed like the sun in the sky. Yet she wasn't blinded; she felt like she could tectonic plates, her mind raced with expanding boundaries of data and awareness. Things she had to focus on were now merely in the back of her mind, waiting to be accessed. Then the light stopped, and she was dropped to the ground harmlessly, a clank and a minor jolt confirming that she was once again on firm soil.  
  
The diagnostic readouts of her armour rattled off many abilities that had been added, and brief memory flashes of how to use them surged into her mind. Everything seemed so much more natural, and fluid than what the marine armour should be capable of, and even the plating seemed more seamless and flexible than it was before.  
  
She looked around and saw everyone else gazing upon themselves in awe, vehicles transformed and altered; the recoverable dead back on their feet, the wounded back in fighting condition.  
  
Stygak gave his gun a look and a spin of its rotary barrels and grinned beneath his helmet as he saw its chambers open up with new types of energy at its command. He let out a bit of a laugh and lurched his head back and belted out a roar of triumph.  
  
"Now we can fight!" He said with triumph while Ghor nodded sagely.  
  
"And fight we will. We're going to need to cut through a thicket of enemy mechanoids and turn those bots into scrap. And let me make this clear; there's going to be no salvage collection. We're here to save the sector, not play with fire." Ghor said, rolling ahead of the pack while the Palatine Mind's observer drone raced ahead and flew in front of him.  
  
"And what is it that you want?" The Cyborg said, clasping his mechanical lower mandibles together and studying them with his orange optics. The irritation in his voice was evident; he didn't want to be delayed any further.  
  
"Oh, I just have one more thing to inform you of." They said helpfully, orbiting around Ghor like a planet until he grabbed at the avatar with a pincer arm and forced it to stay in front of him.  
  
"Please release me."  
  
"No." He said bluntly.  
  
"Very well, I am also to inform you that once this task is complete, we will be relocating this star system. Please do not force me to have to move it again by trying to rediscover its location. It would be terribly inconvenient to have to pick out a new location once again. So many gravitational variables to consider, I'm sure you understand." Quizalas said before Ghor let out a long sigh.  
  
"Trust me; I don't think anyone here is particularly eager to be returning to this death trap planet. Now, if you don't have any more insight to offer, I suggest you teleport us as close to the action as possible." Ghor said.  
  
He released the Drone which hovered back into its preferred position, almost appearing to give a nod right before it turned around to assess the group as they were in the midst of checking each other out and passing celebratory gestures like high fives.  
  
"Of course, do be mindful that time is running out, you have twenty minutes to resolve this crisis. You will not have terribly much time to plan your entry." Quizalas reported.  
  
Lyraman gave that a thought. She didn't spend too much time on thinking up her response. The timer ticked with ill intent at the top of her HUD and made her break out into a sweat; every second rolling closer to doomsday, making her feel like she'd been punched in the gut. But she gave it thought all the same.  
  
"Can you give us a sitrep and three minutes?" Lyraman said, stepping to the plate.  
  
"I would be happy to." They said in response, the necessary data flowing into their systems all at once. Lyraman may not have been used to battalion level command, and most of the units here were broken and depleted, but she saw what needed to be done all the same.

  
"Alright, guys...here's what we're going to do." She said, turning around and clicking her fingers to get people's attention.

_Old Foe Chamber, Zoran._

  
  
Samus slid between the legs of the Moonhunter, missiles streaming upwards into its waist region to pull its attention away just long enough for Spire to rush in and box it a few times in the head. Each thundercrack inducing punch, giving her a jolt of excitement before that was crushed by seeing Arne grabbed by the Hunter's primary hand with a snapping gesture as he flew and slammed into the ground.  
  
He grunted and tried to pry some of the creature's fingers off of him, groaning as his shielding protested from the crushing force. The sound of his impact to the ground punched her in the heart. Fiery anger inflamed her throat, and she could feel her teeth gritting as her fist clenched. He tried to keep himself in the fight with the Shock Coil while the Sunstalker; holding off Spire and Armaud with its wings, spun around to try and stomp on his head.  
  
"Arne, out of the way!" She said, the boy turning to her and nodding as he phased through the floor.  
  
She steeled herself, froze time, and tackled the foe with her shinespark, letting herself impact the Moonhunter with her gravity boost set to massively increase her weight for maximum impact force. The surge of the impact made her reel briefly, but she pushed onwards as she struck into its chest like a meteor.  
  
The blow bowled over her opponent, sending it onto its back and flipping end over end with repeated crashes that made her grin. "Come on, get back up. I'm not done hitting you." She said with an almost feral, belligerent edge.  
  
Arne pulled himself out of the ground and shook his head, turning the monocular lens of his helmet towards her. "You good to go?" He asked, panting slightly.  
  
"Always." She said as the two lashed out at the back of the Sunstalker while it spun to keep its weapons facing all four of its enemies at once.  
  
The Sunstalker reached for its companion and let out a seemingly mournful tone as it the Moonhunter pushed itself to its feet. Another squeeze of its hands and a new black hole came into being; sucking in a volley of incoming shots from the elders. The stabbing sensation of danger warned the four of something big and dangerous coming just before it drew in the other black hole and slammed them in together.  
  
Time and space stretched and distorted, their temporal distorts, and gravity boosts acting to counteract the worst effects. The singularities began to fall into one another, making a deadly dance as they swirled around for dominance; letting the accretion form into a fatal quasar jet that it swept around the room. Adding spin to its singularities, it allowed the white-hot jets scorch anything it touched.  
  
Already trying to avoid a barrage of nova spheres from the Sunstalker, Samus and Arne were caught by the quasar blasts and thrown across the room; energy dropping quickly from the intense energies. The feedback was dull at first, but began to build as the Sunstalker started to feed the black holes with solar flare blasts; incandescent maelstroms of energy around the growing event horizon and intensifying the quasar blast.  
  
Arne responded first; stopping time and bringing his shield out in front, straining against what felt like pushing against the gods themselves until he got his foot onto the ground and let his blue energy shield rise. As intensely powerful as the Quasar jet was, it began to reflect, and he felt pride in himself as he calculated the right angle to lead the blast straight back to its sender through the complicated gravitational lensing of space in his head in a split second.  
  
As time resumed and Samus phased through the wall, the quasar jet struck the Sunstalker in the face and bulldozed it over just as Spire and Armaud dragged the Moonhunter into close combat, smashing its face in with a shockwave inducing punch and a roar of fury from Armaud followed by Spire's hammerfists and fatherly outrage.  
  
"GET AWAY FROM THOSE KIDS!" Armaud roared as she rained impact after impact onto the Moonhunter, making it groan with weariness from a blitz of ranged and melee attacks. Armaud's serpentine alt-mode, the Cariotek, lashed around its leg and pulled it off of its feet before jabbing fangs into its shielded leg, eliciting another howl of outrage.  
  
Just as Samus and Arne had managed to rejoin the two; latching onto their opponent to leech energy from them; Samus felt that pinprick sensation of danger from her side once more. Eyes widening, she grabbed Arne and shoved Spire down. "Look out!" She shouted as the Sunstalker teleported itself back into the fray after having been sent clear out of the battlespace.  
  
Bringing out her sword to parry its solar axe, her body felt like it was about to buckle beneath the opponent's strength and size. Grunting with the strains of do or die effort, she realised she couldn't overpower the Sunstalker, but looked behind her and grinned when she realised she didn't have to. Feeling safe in her back up, she stepped back and let Armaud jump off her shoulders for a bit of a boost to tackle into the Old Foe's face.  
  
The Moonhunter's foot came down, Spire's arms reached out and stopped it from landing, falling onto one knee and letting Arne grab at Samus and swing her into the lunar menace; her Screw attack roaring to life. The sensation of knowing something behind him alerted him to his need to change direction, the sick feeling in his gut and flashes of visions getting him to kickflip around the wings of the Stalker. Working on autopilot, he aimed his hands in different directions; shock coil and grapple beam draining energy from the Stalker and feeding it into Armaud respectively.  
  
They traded blows like this for many minutes more, continually alternating between targets, swapping between partners and coming up with a constant barrage of new attacks and counterattacks. But the timer was ticking down constantly, and still, the two were no closer to falling as their shielding regenerated once more.  
  
Samus refused the sensation of defeatism, smacking away the creature of doubt lurking in her mind. She couldn't let herself give up; she couldn't let any of them give up.  
  
The tears in reality were getting worse all around them, Samus already having to clear out a few that were blocking their way with her ice beam. But with only seven minutes left, she was starting to focus less and less on them; more determined to get at least some lasting injury out of her two enemies.  
  
Arne fell onto a knee, panting after pulling himself up from a hard blow. He didn't want to give in, but he kept running the numbers. What were they supposed to do? They'd been going back and forth like this constantly with no progress. Even clearing out some of the machines outside to let the drones reinforce them had not given them enough progress.  
  
He had tried coordinating the guardian machines for maximum effect, aiming their attacks and helping them move out of the way. But he was frustrated to see how slowly they had chipped away at the vitae bars his helmet readout for him. He wanted to cry, coming so far only to be met with an obstacle he couldn't overcome. Maybe Zurvduat was right about him being soft.  
  
"Ready for round twenty-six?" Spire said, rolling his shoulders.  
  
The Sunstalker slammed its primary hands together to hold the Solar axe in both hands and raised them overhead, angling to chop into its opponents with an executioner's swing. This was going to be it.  
  
"Always," Samus said as the Stalker began to roar out right before it took a massive plasma beam straight to the chest. The Red and Orange ray shoved it clear off of its feet and tossed it into the same hole in the ceiling Arne had reflected it into before, and bursts of power missiles arced around to avoid the gravity wells of the Moonhunter and toss it towards its own singularities.  
  
Samus did a double-take and looked behind herself, feeling the ground tremble slightly beneath her feet at the tread of something big.  
  
And there was Ghor, augmented with Chozo tech on a temporary basis to lend support; and he had brought back up, lots of it. More drones and enhanced marines swarmed into the fray while Ghor slammed his pincer cannons into one another.  
  
"I'd say its past time for you two to clear out. You're trespassing on sacred ground, and I've got a mind for holy retribution." Ghor growled as Spire let out a snorting laugh.  
  
"You got lost or something Ghor?" He said joyously.  
  
"Ghor doesn't get lost Spire. He just needs to rest his back sometimes." Armaud said wryly as her optics flicked towards Ghor and nodded.  
  
"Pleasure to see you again too Spire. I see Armaud's also in one piece too; but then I suppose not even the heat death of the universe would put you down." Ghor retorted.  
  
"Ghor! Come on; we need to kick these guy's metal hides in!" Samus shouted excitedly, internally shrieking with joy between her giggles of excitement.  
  
"Oh uh...hey Ghor? I'd say we saved them for you but well; I'd be lying." Arne said, coughing slightly at the end, a touch awkwardly while Ghor laughed.  
  
"Won't be a problem, kids. Now, let's see if the two of you can do me proud. Everyone, take those two to the scrapyard." Ghor said, pointing his pincer arm at the Moonhunter and the returning Sunstalker. The two were taken aback by the sight facing them, but quickly recovered their composure and flexed their wings outwards in challenge.  
  
Forced to explode its black holes to maintain its line of sight; accelerating hawking radiation until they had decayed away; the Moonhunter shot its hands out in either direction to unleash rays of pale lunar laser light. Bouncing off the walls and refracting in all directions, they turned the field into a deadly game of tripwire dodge, funnelling in enemies towards the stellar cone of plasma fire conjured by the Sunstalker.  
  
This effort was however, too little, too late. From every side came more and more weapons that could actually chip at their shielding. They turned to one direction to deal with one threat, they opened themselves up to a new one. Howls of angry protest tore from whatever equivalent of throats they had as they stumbled over and flailed in an attempt to deal with being swarmed all at once.  
  
Samus went about freezing another dimensional rift shut and sealing one of the Sunstalker's rifts before it could vent a solar flare at a tank that emptied a shell into the Moonhunter's side. A moment later she froze its feet to the ground and showered it in super missiles that brought it to a knee right before she rolled onto it in morph ball mode, power bombs repeatedly dropped to weaken it. Every hit felt powerful; every blow felt closer to victory; she was doing it; _they_ were doing it.  
  
Sensing it had started to try and reach for her, she fired off her boost ball so that Spire's magma cannon was free to explode against it like a dying star and froze one of its arms to the ground as it rolled. Getting a nod and a pat on the back by a nearby trooper who seemed to figure she was a child based on their way of addressing her, she blushed slightly at the compliment before rejoining the fray.  
  
Arne had pulled a marine out of the way of a black hole sweep by the Moonhunter and catching the Sunstalker in a positronic power-bomb pulse that tore a decent chunk of its shield vitality away in a cascading blue detonation. He unfurled from his alt mode and looked at the Sunstalker fall onto its hands, combined beam fire from Spire, Armaud, Ghor, and Stygak exploding in their midst and making the two start to spark.  
  
He yanked himself into the Sunstalker, no longer afraid or doubting, smashing into it with a kick and knocking it over altogether. Armaud jumped in front of him, taking the Moonhunter's Horizon blade to her chin and smashing its leg out from under it to let it feel the fury of progenitor boosted missiles headed straight towards it. All while Arne was busily smashing his fist repeatedly into the face of the Sunstalker, feeling oddly satisfied as the enemy rumbled in worry and tried to shield its head.  
  
"Give! Up! Already!" He shouted between his blows even though he wasn't particularly sure if the Old Foe even understood his language. He vaulted off and let Stygak's hammer bowl it over into a roll for Samus to grab with her grapple tether and slam it into its sibling, crumpling them onto the ground.  
  
"We've got them on the run!" One of the troopers shouted, dodging out of the way of the killer Solar flares that consumed a Werizo in its fires until a Golden Torizo had dropped into the fray and grabbed onto the Sunstalker as it tried to fly away.  
  
With a spinning motion, the Chozo guardian dunked the Sunstalker onto its sibling, dodging out of the way of return fire with movement that seemed utterly at odds with its statue-like appearance.  
  
Ghor was not one to waste opportunities, letting his plasma cannon shriek to life once more and drive the pair closer to their machine. Spire's cannon let out its own eruption blast, a pyroclastic tsunami accompanying the heatwave behind it and scourging the pair while Armaud grabbed their heads and smashed them into the ground.  
  
Unable to focus on any particular threat, the Old Foes had backed into a path that intersected Arne and Samus.  
  
"+Hey Arne, you know what happens when two speedboosted entities collide while shinesparking right?+" Samus said,  
  
"+Massive kinetic energy nova event. Are you sure you want to do this?" He said.  
  
"+Absolutely. You've set the new guys to friendly right?+" She said as she got into a stance prepared to sprint.  
  
"+Well yeah, why wouldn't I?+" He said.  
  
"+Just making sure Arne. Alright, ready?+"  
  
"+Bring it.+" He said as they sprinted towards each other and then shot off towards each other at speeds that would have made railgun slugs blush. A jump and a quick tuck into their alt modes and a charge of their boost-spheres later and the two slammed into each other like a biblical event locking horns with astronomical phenomenon.  
  
The energies of the competing accelerations began to fold into each other before rippling outwards in a detonation that had the facility not contained in a forcefield would have likely continued outwards well over the horizon. Everyone involved looked away, and after having been beaten so severely, the two old foes were in no shape to dodge out of the way as they tried to defend against the lashing touch of raw motion.  
  
At last, the last layer of their shielding broke and their armour singed from continued impacts. They stood themselves up and tried to press against the blast wave with their wings, only to stumble once more before the shockwave had entirely subsided with its crimson light.  
  
They could take more of a pounding still, much more, but these shots were genuinely hitting them now. Impact sparks skidded off of them as they tried to pick themselves up, taking blow after blow before they decided not to stick around long enough for their suits to be breached. With a howl of outrage, the Sunstalker grabbed its sibling and tore open another circle before throwing the Moonhunter in and stumbling through with pained howling.  
  
Though many were already cheering, Samus had already turned away from the action, racing towards the riftmaker. She resealed an obstacle course's worth of tears in existence, and her left hand quickly touched the console as she analysed the schematics in a moment. Her brain worked overtime to piece together the data, seeing where the energy was flowing from and how.  
  
"Samus, they got away." Arne said, catching up to her and offering another arm lock and headbutt gesture that Samus took only a moment to reciprocate before tearing herself away back to work.  
  
"No time for that, we've got minutes before this thing blows." She said, feeling her mind racing as she concentrated. Doomsday was approaching quickly, and she had to figure out how a species she'd never seen the technology of could rig up such a device in less time than it took to microwave a meal with an old Earth device.  
  
"We can't just blow it up, or it'll go off prematurely." Arne said, taking a look at how the device was fitted together himself. Too much pressure on its components and it would start to crumble into the rift at the centre. Which of course, would cause the very thing they were trying to avoid.  
  
"Right, the bomb's got a vortex at the centre. Pseudo-singularity, like a hole, cut out of spacetime. My cryo-weapons' anti-energy would negate it. But I need neutrinos to jar it open without setting it off." Samus said, looking to him and smiling.  
  
"Together then?" Arne said, getting a nod out of her. He felt proud of himself, what was supposed to be a routine training exercise to determine their passage into adolescence had instead become a grand old adventure, and here he was about to save the day for the first time. He muttered a prayer of thanks to his parents and his deities as Samus recited a litany to the spirits she revered.  
  
His Shock Coil sang as it lashed into the machine, its components folding open and exposing the howling hole in existence that had been cut open by the Old Foe. Samus' Cryolyte charged up and then surged forward, the anti-energy latching onto the powers used to keep the hole open and cancelling them out, forming frigid water in its place.  
  
At last, the overwhelming sense of imminent apocalyptic danger passed as the hole froze over completely and the machine powered down; a sigh of relief coming from Arne and Samus before Spire tackled the two of them and hoisted them onto his shoulders.  
  
"YOU'VE DONE IT!" He said with a boisterous cheer as celebrations rang out.  
  
"That'll do kids...That'll do." Armaud nodded while the two inheritors looked to each other and grinned from ear to ear.

* * *

** Consolidated Logbook Entries **

  
  
N'Kren Logs: The Oath of Guardians.  
  
We who remain hereby swear this Oath to ensure that though we rest in search of better days, those of us who choose to remain will use our power to do harm only in the pursuit of justice and the common good. We who take on the Oath of the Guardian will retain the long vigil as our brethren retreat into the ever-dream shall scour the stars in search of evil and seek to smite it before it may fester. We who swear this Oath will seek an end to all wickedness we encounter, physical or social and shall forever seek to guide those who come after on the paths that are righteous. We who swear this Oath recognise that the burden of immortality is the wisdom of the ages and that this wisdom must be used with the utmost caution lest it be twisted.  
  
We who swear this Oath, go into eternity as its guardians.  
  
_Samus' Notes:_  
  
This must be the Oath that Armaud Svihaly took. I wonder how long she's actually been awake, all alone in the universe? I hope more of the N'kren awaken at some point, at least for her sake.  
  
_Arne's Notes:_  
  
Dating says that this Oath was made about 8,000 Earth years ago as the N'Kren began resting in their Morphomundi. Relatively recent by progenitor standards, but I'm guessing the Alimbics disappearing had something to do with it.

  
  
Mechanoids: Old Foe: Infantry: Combat-Capable: Seklitoq  
  
Seklitoqs are autonomous combatants designed in the visage of the Old Foe Serpentine Death God Kzarn. The Death Rays they fire can nullify both the strong atomic force binding most forms of baryonic matter together as well as Vitae, striking directly at the life force of their enemies. Seklitoqs are also capable melee combatants, and being struck by the bites of either their primary or secondary heads will inflict the death touch effect as surely as being impacted by their beam weapon fire. However, Seklitoqs have limited aerial manoeuvrability and can struggle to deal with enemies with superior vertical movement capability.  
  
_Samus' Notes:_  
  
I'm interested in why the Seklitoqs resemble old earth snakes. Though it might just be a coincidence, there's only so many ways one can design a body for a long, limbless creature. On more combat-related stuff, alt-moding will always break their constriction attempts.  
  
  
_Arne's Notes:_  
  
These Seklitoqs can't be at Forbidden War levels of technology, but the material analysis shows they were definitely built with local materials. I'm not sure how they did it, but I'm suspecting someone may have given the two access by mistake.

  
  
Mechanoids: Old Foe: Infantry: Flying: Combat-Capable: Yukat  
  
Designed in the countenance of the Storm Deity Zokat, the Yukats serve as an expendable mass aerial combat form of mechanoid. Though of low quality by Old Foe standards, the Yukats are always in plentiful supply and can easily be upgraded as the situation requires. In devotion to the storm deity, the Yukats will seek to swarm around opponents and strike at them with high energy electromagnetic discharges and systems able to manipulate the temperature and velocity of gaseous materials. Yukats were infamous for their ability to tear targets apart with the air inside of their respiratory system. While armour and shielding, as well as your progenitor blood, will prevent this fate from happening to you, Yukats are still capable of incredible maneuvres due to their technology and seeking weapons are recommended.  
  
_Samus' Notes:_  
  
The electromagnetic interference can get annoying sometimes but I think I could design something that would help counteract it. I'd just need a bit of time to work on the armour.  
  
_Arne's Notes:_  
  
They are their own ECM systems so you're going to need to use non-electromagnetic tracking systems to make sure your missiles will track properly. Luckily that shouldn't be too much of a problem.

  
  
Mechanoids: Old Foe: Infantry: Combat-Capable: Uthaklat  
  
Uthaklats are a mass-produced form of heavy infantry combat drone used by the Old Foe derived from the form of the Moon Deity Xax. Built in devotion to the lunar lord of the Old Foe, the Uthaklats possess ample amounts of brute force and power as well as a large number of systems meant to control gravity and the flow of space. These systems also allow them to teleport virtually at will to any location they have sufficient data about so long as no force is anchoring them to prevent such forms of movement. It also allows them a form of flight and incredible leaping capability even given their already incredible strength. Against enemies who lack gravity manipulation devices of their own, it will allow them to cripple their mobility or turn them into targets for objects "falling" towards them.  
  
_Samus' Notes:_  
  
They can't directly affect us with their gravity abilities with the gravity boost. But they can designate areas around us to send projectiles our way, and they can still affect themselves. It's a bit annoying, but you do need to put a bit more into a hit to knock them off their feet.  
  
_Arne's Notes:_  
  
The Uthaklats are a bit telegraphed on the swing, if you can predict the gravimetric alteration you're likely to be able to dodge their hammers every time. Especially if they can't target you directly with the gravity field meant to increase the hammer's swing force.

  
  
Mechanoids: Old Foe: Infantry: Quadrepedal: Combat-Capable: Zakateks  
  
Zakateks are designed to honour the solar deity of the Old Foe; Zilax. Zakateks are agile ambush drones that are also capable of long distance pursuit; as relentless in their chase of prey as the heat of the sun itself. The Zakateks will typically prefer melee combat over all other options, striking with solar claws and biting attacks as well as their stabbing tails, but can make use of many ranged based weapons before closing in, particularly their optic beams. Zakateks however do have some weaknesses in that their underbellies, more vulnerable than the rest of their chassis; are vulnerable to attack in their standard pouncing manoeuvre.  
  
_Samus' Notes:_  
  
I'm admittedly not the biggest cat person in the universe. The tail's pretty grabbable though, if you sidestep the pounce you can grab it and swing them around pretty hard.  
  
_Arne's Notes:_  
  
I really should bring Geri and Freki with me on these sorts of missions, I bet they'd turn these things into scrap metal. Just...probably not near Hugin and Munin.

  
  
Mechanoids: Old Foe: Infantry: Combat-Capable: Izakilt  
  
Izakilts are a highly expendable and easily modified form of infantry combat drone used in large numbers by the Old Foe devoted to no deity in particular. While extremely variable in quality depending on the grade deemed necessary for any given engagement, they are never seen without the strength of numbers. Furthermore, they are typically fitted with additional equipment that allow them to mix up their tactics, often carrying implements such as melee instruments, shield screens, or added armour. This can lead some to assume that Uthaklats are living infantry erroneously. Izakilts do not typically possess any particular resistances or weaknesses, but with their numbers; area of effect weapons are recommended against them.  
  
_Samus' Notes:_  
  
Izakilts will often form into phalanxes in confined spaces where they can't be flanked, but they're easy enough to clear out with power bombs as long as someone else is keeping their attention above ground level.  
  
_Arne's Notes:_  
  
The Screw Attack and Speed Booster are immensely helpful when you need to break into their formations. They're not very good fighters against someone on our level one on one, but when they can cooperate together is when they can cause some real hurt.

  
  
Upgrades: Sub-Weapons: Beam: Chozo Created*: Cryolyte  
  
Designed by Samus Aran based on the ice beam and loosely inspired by old designs on Zebes, the Cryolyte is a powerful weapon that releases a stream of superchilled plasma combined with anti-energy in a long semi-continuous beam. Capable of rapid-fire albeit having somewhat limited range, the Cryolyte is able to freeze multiple targets at a time; penetrating through nearly any obstacles to the extent of its range while generating enormous amounts of frozen matter. The Cryolyte can also be charged to fire the Cryospite; an enlarged blast that will create a wall of cover in addition to freezing anything it comes into contact with. While the Chozo of Zebes and the Alimbics of Sentus Primaris have copied it, Samus' variation has longer range and a wider area of effect as well as a more intense freezing effect that will continue to damage affected enemies while frozen due to her continued refinements.  
  
_Samus' Notes:_  
  
Working on this made for an incredibly fun afternoon! I'll try to improve the range as I continue to work on it, but I have a good feeling that this one's going to be a keeper. I've got some ideas for some more variations of it that I've been cooking up.  
  
_Arne's Notes:_  
  
Hrm, I should probably start refining my Shock Coil too. I'm definitely getting some ideas for more Neutrino and Electrical based weapons too. Some sort of Tesla beam based on somewhat similar principles maybe? I should ask Samus for her opinion next time we workshop together.

  
  
Upgrades: Sub-Weapons: Stream: N'Kren Created: Toxolyst  
  
The Toxolyst is a N'Kren made weapon that continuously fires corrosive disintegration streams. The energies that go into the Toxolyst will alter the bindings of most forms of matter not treated to be resistant to its effects and rapidly cause most substances to corrode into a soup of quarks. Entities that rely heavily on complex chemical reactions to sustain themselves will be significantly adversely affected as it breaks down their chemistry and replicates the effects of virtually every conventional strain of poison at once. The Toxolyst can also be charged to release a hellgout that will travel farther and has a larger cloud. Svihaly's true N'Kren created Toxolyst will leave a long lingering cloud behind, harmless to designated friendlies but leaving areas temporarily impassible; and enemies slain by it will explode into more Toxolyst gas.  
  
_Samus' Notes:_  
  
It's honestly a really gross weapon, and I don't think I'd enjoy using it on most targets. But I suppose if the situation calls for it I'd be willing to make use of it. It shouldn't be too hard to modify the formula to not linger as long in the environment too. At least it kills too quickly to leave people in pain.  
  
_Arne's Notes:_  
  
I know a lot of places outright ban this weapon, but like with the Neutrino weapon ban; I don't see how this is an exceptionally more horrible way to kill something than setting it on fire? The standards of a lot of international law on which weapons are "good" or not seem pretty dumb; war itself is a horrible thing.

  
  
Devices: Old Foe: Dimensional Travel: Riftmaker  
  
The Riftmaker is designed to try and forge a connection to the completely isolated and barricaded prison universe where the Old Foe was sealed into at the close of the Forbidden Wars. This device will not succeed at its task due to lacking the power necessary to accomplish such a feat. However, despite only possessing an infinitesimal fraction of the power needed to achieve its task as well as numerous fatal design flaws, it will be more than sufficient to annihilate all non-protected objects within a two hundred parsec diameter and the blast will propagate out to a total of two thousand parsecs. The blast will collapse multiple coextant forms of reality atop of each other in a manner that few will be able to withstand. While the user has the equipment and abilities to survive, more than ninety six trillion known sophont individuals are within the immediate blast radius and will perish if allowed to detonate. Analysis indicates that the device has a dimensional tear at its centre that serves as the riftmaker's core; sealing the rift will disarm the Riftmaker. The structure of the riftmaker is also easily disrupted by concentrated Neutrino flow.  
  
_Samus' Notes:_  
  
This device was made so desperately and shoddily I'm starting to have questions as to how the two Old Foes managed to build everything else. They had to have known that this device was nowhere near functional right? But I think I can close this up.  
  
_Arne's Notes:_  
  
I could probably design a better version of this in a day with the right parts. But right now it's a very dangerous live bomb and I have to think of it that way. No time to figure out how to disarm it via reprogramming sadly, I'd have liked the challenge of squaring up against the Synthetic Consciousness managing it.

* * *

*Invented by Samus Aran

Author's Note: I'd like to put in a thank you to the people of the [Super Smash Prose discord server](https://discord.gg/xSEtKhE) as well as those of [my own discord server](https://discord.gg/92jDKRW) for helping to motivate me to finish this chapter. You guys are great!


	18. Interlude 2: Settling Dust

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Samus and Arne celebrate their shared thirteenth birthday and reflect on what happened on Zoran as they realise that soon; it will be time to venture out into the wider universe. But Zurvduat remains unimpressed by their accomplishments.

_Lexylan Starport, Arganti_

  
Samus' ship landed on the planet first, its struts bringing it to a gentle stop before she vaulted out and landed on her feet. She cracked her neck slightly in both directions, laying a hand on her hip while Arne, Spire, and Armaud followed shortly.  
  
It was good to be back home on the familiar soil of Arganti to be sure, and she looked upon the peaceful vistas and the bustle of mechanoids going from one task to another with a smile. Crisis averted, everything back to normal, so it seemed.  
  
Arne caught up to her with his typical brisk walk, getting a thumbs up from her as he approached.  
  
"Man how did you get here first?" He asked with a smirk as he dismissed his helmet and lowered the phantom suit's hood. The hungry gleam in his eye for all knowledge relating to the mechanical was unmistakable, and she was only happy to indulge.  
  
"Well, I've been playing around with the N-Space systems, trying to file down the dimensional transit time. If I could get here before your overengined fighter, I must have done it right flyboy." She said, tapping on her chin after willing away her helmet and then letting out a mock scoff.  
  
"Hey, the Sleipnir fits the way I fly just fine. Especially with all the work I put into it. Its...just right engined!" He said in faux-protest as the two of them shared a laugh.  
  
"Well, shame we didn't get a chance to bomb those two with them with the ships. I was really hoping for a chance to fly against a real enemy." Arne sighed wistfully.  
  
"Well, I'm sure you'll get your chance! But come on, we did great there. Don't focus too much on the stuff we didn't get to do." She said, walking at an easy pace alongside him.  
  
"Mmhm. Well, to celebrate I thought I'd show you this thing I saw on the ComNet." He said, holding his left hand behind his back while dismissing his arm cannon in a fade of blue light.  
  
"Oh? Let me guess...something to do with your hands?" She said, tilting her head out of curiosity.  
  
"Yep, it's called a high-five. Come on, up top!" He said, briefly wondering if that was how it was supposed to do before offering an open palmed hand gesture that Samus matched, the two smacking each other's hands hard enough to create a visible shockwave and thunderclap.  
  
Spire approached the two from behind with surprising silence, though their sense-move had warned them he was coming; they also knew he meant no harm as he scooped the two up in his huge arms and planted them atop his shoulders, one each.  
  
"Come on kids; you've earned yourselves a ride on the Boulder." Spire said, the two kids swinging their legs from atop his perch and holding onto the crystal spikes on his shoulder. From this vantage point, the world seemed so much smaller than it was at ground level, and childish glee made itself evident in their excited noises.  
  
"Nobody calls you the Boulder." Armaud said teasingly as she calmly walked by Spire's side, each step of her mechanical legs clanking against the hangar floor.  
  
"Well, I am now. So best learn to live with it Armaud." Spire said, a gentle snort like two rocks scraping against each other coming from him.  
  
"Say, where is everyone?" Arne said, looking around and seeing nobody at the moment. It made him feel slightly at disease even though he sensed no incoming danger heading their way.  
  
"I mean it might be a special day...it is..." She said before checking the suit chronometer and then gasping.  
  
"Sacred ghosts it's our bir-" She said before Armaud opened the next door and the five were greeted with a rather large crowd of many species who had gathered here; Old Bird holding a cake in his outstretched hands with thirteen candles. Elmorni held one of her own, also with thirteen candles while everyone they knew and a few they didn't flanked the two.  
  
"Happy Birthday and congratulations!" The group said in Unison with only a few exceptions. Even Hugin and Munin had joined in, while Pyonchi held up a tablet displaying as much; sitting atop August Wing's right shoulder.  
  
"Ahhh! Thank you so much!" Samus said, excitedly clapping her hands before Ghor rested a hand on both of their shoulders once they slipped off of Spire, the slender cyborg detached from his Mech and having a far more kindly look to his optics, mandibles in the approximation of a smile.  
  
"You know, I was originally coming for you kids' birthday parties. It was supposed just to be a fun way to kill a bit of time." He said before looking around while Samus and Arne gladly accepted the gift of cake.  
  
"Well...thanks for coming all the same. We still had fun, right?" Arne said as he laid the ice cream cake on a table next to Samus' and waited for everyone to gather around.  
  
"We're so proud of you for what you've done and the achievements you've made. To defeat two of the Old Foes at your age is a tremendous honour. Please, accept our praise." Old Bird said with a bow of reverence towards the two children.  
  
"I mean, it's what we had to do. Couldn't just let them blow up the sector you know?" Arne said, blushing a bit as he scratched at the back of his neck.  
  
"-Arne, my son; there's no need for you to be so modest. You and Samus have done something I couldn't have dreamed of doing at your age. You have done so much more than pass your trial of delving.-" Elmorni said, folding her hands in front of her slender tripedal waist and lowering her blue head slightly.  
  
"Really? I mean, we went so far off the rails!" Samus chirped, bouncing a bit on her heels and then looking up at the Alimbic. "But we also did get the trial prize too, just in case." Samus said, producing a sphere of energy surrounded by rings covered in runes and tossing it towards Old Bird who caught it gratefully.  
  
Eyeing it for a moment and then compressing it into a tiny point with a squeeze of his hands, Re-Sekh put the sphere away and looked down on his daughter.  
  
"It was hardly necessary to take at this point, but I am pleased you accomplished the task anyway." He said with a proud, avuncular tone before running a hand through her hair and stroking it gently, making sure not to displace her hair from its current styling.  
  
Arne shared a hug with Elmorni for a few moments until he broke away and had a look around the room his eyes briefly locking gazes with Zurvduat's cold stare before flicking away. He didn't get a good vibe from him, but he tried to push that thought out of his mind and just focus on what was in front of him. Maybe after some festivities, Zurvduat would calm down from whatever mood it was he was having.  
  
Samus gave an ugly stare at Zurvduat and made a brief face at him that drew a scornful expression from the General. As far as she was concerned the fact that he seemed so offended by simply sticking her tongue out at him and making a weird face was good; he deserved worse.  
  
Arne similarly pushed one of Mother Brain's oculi drones out of his face after craning his head back to get away from the staring drone. Feeling a bit of resistance from the drone, he just extended his arm a bit harder and frowned.  
  
"Please get out of my face." He said before turning back and eyeing what was laid out all over the table. Sparkling drinks, snack food for every preferred taste sensation, condiments and dips, everything the two could ask for.  
  
"Ah, Aira, Sarxyl; you have done well for yourself I se-." Somek-Ka said as he walked into the room before Samus interrupted him with a raised finger.  
  
She was not going to have Grey Voice interrupt her moment with his usual stoic serious business attitude to just about everything.  
  
"Shhh...cake is here, let me blow out the candles." She said, getting a nod from Arne.  
  
"One...two...three!" Arne said before they exhaled sharply through pursed lips, snuffing out the meagre yellow flames and welcoming in the start of a new year of their lives. A cheer, excited and full of warmth and praise; rang out across the room, excited congratulations being passed to the two newly minted teenagers as they peeled back slightly.  
  
After having been through so much already, the two felt so tremendously excited for what could come next that they were just about giggling with giddy excitement as Samus extended her arm blade to cut out her slice of cake.  
  
The ice cream cake tasted sweet and was just the right degree of creamy and moist in her mouth, and after a long day away on her trial, it may as well have been divine ambrosia. She hummed in joy and closed her eyes to savour the flavours that met her tongue. Far more sensitive than most people's taste buds, she could detect subtleties in the flavour that most people couldn't even imagine existed. She picked up all the little chemical cues in the sugar, informing her of where and how it was made. She could tell the exact type of chocolate and the exact age of the batter that went into the cake.  
  
And she didn't even need to open her eyes to know Arne was in the same sort of bliss if anything he was enjoying it even more. Far too used to eating bland nutrient supplements, Arne relished in the chances to spoil himself now and then. Not too much, as the explosion of flavour from overly rich food tended to overwhelm him, doing so on occasion would do him wonders. He let the sensation of the ice cream melting in his mouth linger for a moment more before taking another bite with a spoon.  
  
"-Eat your fill child, soon it will be time for you to take the next step on your journey. So for now, enjoy life among us.-" Ygrak said in a matronly voice.  
  
"Come on, there will be time for that later, for now, why don't we try and have some fun?" Spire said with a dismissive wave. It was partly for them, and partly for his desire to simply have a moment to relax after the day he just had.  
  
"Agreed, I think I could do with a bit of a break from progenitor trials for a while. Let them have their moment for now. It's their day." Armaud said, folding her arms and regarding the cake that everyone was digging into somewhat longingly. Flesh that she no longer had slightly ached for sensations she no longer needed to have satiated.  
  
"Certainly would be the better option. I could do with a party after sitting through Federation debriefing to get those troopers cleared. Almost as bad as trying to follow up any leads on who might have attacked Cylosis; shield screens and legal adhesive tying down every clue." Ghor said, shaking his head and clasping his cybernetic mandibles together.  
  
"Well, I think you'll find out one day. Then we can get to work on getting justice, right?" Arne said, turning his attention over to Ghor who gave a small nod.  
  
"Personally I'd prefer to wait until you're a bit older to be going after secretive armies. For now, I'd rather you and Samus be kids and worry more about how to make friends then shoot outs with conspiracies and space pirates." He said calmly.  
  
"Which is why the next phase of your training will focus on socialisation rather than warfare. You've already proven yourselves masters of battle in any case." Old Bird said politely, stepping a bit closer to the conversation after having scarfed down a piece of the cake.  
  
"Papa, we can talk about that later; cake now." Samus said, folding her arms and tapping her foot. She was ill inclined to waste a single moment of her birthday, and her furrowed brow made that clear.  
  
"-Would anyone care for some games then? I think I've picked out a few that everyone can enjoy.-" Elmorni said with a gentle laugh.  
  


_Sixteen hours later_

  
Arne and Samus had changed into more casual outfits. Arne was now wearing a pair of blue trousers, a darker blue hooded coat with grey highlights near the cuffs, a red shirt, and black sneakers. Samus wore a comfortable blue shirt beneath an orange windbreaker coat; yellow highlighted forest green pants and black coloured boots covering her lower body.  
  
The two were busy with an energetic dance, twirling around one another and moving in tune to a song the both of them enjoyed; lively neo-swing music that gave them a bouncy beat to follow. While Zurvduat and Mother Brain and some of their cohort seemed unimpressed at best, plenty of other people seemed to be having fun just as they were.  
  
However, unlike most dances, there was no clear leader; each of them seeking to take the lead over the other. Arne would pull her into a few twirls, Samus would dip him afterwards, leading to him retaliating by picking her up, from where she'd flip off him and pull him around.  
  
They parted a bit, holding each other only by a single hand before rotating around and pulling into each other; grabbing each other's hands and pushing slightly to see who'd give way to dip. Samus bent slightly backwards, leading him back with her while the two shared a laugh. He was more assertive than usual.  
  
"Confident, I like that." She said with a wide grin from ear to ear as the two were in the midst of a series of steps.  
  
"We did just save a sector after all."  
  
"True, I like seeing you this way. It's so much better than watching you doubt yourself all the time." She said, pulling in close enough that their foreheads touched each other while he brought an arm around her side and tugged her in close.  
  
"Well, you've gotten pretty good at leading people yourself. Making people feel more comfortable...thinking on the fly and...I couldn't have done it without you is what I'm saying." He said back to her as she brushed a thumb against his cheek while they continued with their dance.  
  
"Arne, you're going to make me blush at this rate!" She said, though it was a bit too late to prevent that particular eventuality.  
  
"What if I like seeing that?" He whispered into her ears, cheeks hot with blood rushing into them.  
  
"Well, you're very lucky then blueberry." She said with a sly grin as she glanced at his choice of colours.  
  
He scrambled to think of a comeback. He couldn't let her get away with this victory in their games of riposte and teasing. But what could possibly hope to contend with the perfection that was "blueberry" as a teasing nickname? He thought of the usual colouration of her armour and then grabbed for it in his mind.  
  
"Well um...so are you...golden girl." He said, stumbling slightly with his words as he realised he had a bit of the way to go with confidence.  
  
That cheshire grin of hers creeped its way onto her face.  
  
"Gotcha."  
  
"Are you going to rib everyone like this when you leave home? Can't exactly tease everyone like your friends and family." He asked, quirking one of his platinum brows as the two pulled a bit to the side in their dance.  
  
Samus briefly thought of what she was going to say back to him. Leave...home. Go out there by herself. She looked towards Old Bird, August Wings, War Hawk, and Grey Voice. She imagined them not being there, she looked to him and then imagined him being gone. Alone, with strangers. She froze for a second, feeling cold at the thought of it.  
  
Being without family and friends.  
  
She was so angry when he was screaming in pain and so adamant that Spire and Armaud were fine. Why? She was so overjoyed to see Ghor in particular and felt so much relief to see all her family again...  
  
Alone.  
  
She saw the dust and ash around her in her mind's eye. She felt the dying embers of an infernal heat that had swept around everywhere. She remembered calling until her voice went hoarse only for nobody to answer.  
  
Aches returned, the dreadful silence came back. More than the rapid and vicious terror of the pirate assault, she feared the emptiness that came after. Surrounded by nothing but the dead, just her and Pyonchi to wander the wastelands, the sinister heat of dying flames making her feel so uncomfortably hot.  
  
She didn't want to be alone. She didn't want to call out for help only for nobody to answer. She didn't want the security of having people around her to trust being taken from her. She hated the idea; she dreaded the thought of returning to that awful empty isolation.  
  
Arne called her, she barely responded. She was aware of every breath she took in the worst way, and she felt the urge to scream rising. Was she ready to go? Did she want to leave? To take that step out the door and spend so much time away from everyone she cared about?  
  
Arne wasn't about to let her lose herself to her fears, any more than she did with him. He understood the fear of loneliness, and his time with her had given him similar aches. At first, there was precious little on Sentus Primaris he felt truly attached to; his pets, Elmorni, Ygrak, some of the other nicer Alimbics. Now there was something he'd long for when they had to part ways for some time.  
  
But that didn't mean that there was no way they could make the best of the moment, particularly when she was in need and he was in a position to help.  
  
He hugged her, and she remembered that she wasn't going to face this entirely alone, and the feeling of him around her pressed something into her chest. She snapped back to reality and hugged him back, laying her head on his shoulder for a moment before pulling back and fishing out Old Bird's Medallion once more. The lightning bolt-like symbol put her at ease, and she squeezed her hand around it.  
  
"Are you nervous about going out?" Arne said as the two pulled away from the hustle and bustle of the party to a place more quiet and calm, somewhere they could speak without being observed too closely.  
  
"Aren't you?" She asked, frowning a bit, not understanding why he wasn't having a similar dread of the thought of going on his own. Then she caught his gaze briefly turning to Zurvduat and then shying away from the General, flicking back towards her.  
  
"I...I think getting a chance to go out would be good for me. I'm going to miss you a lot though." He said quietly, his expression softening into a forlorn gaze towards her, hand brushing against her hair.  
  
"I'm going to miss you too...I'm just...hoping I can make new friends quickly. It's going to be hard to start from scratch with a bunch of strangers." She said with an exhale of anxiety.  
  
"Yeah, I'm worried about that too. We did just beat the Sunstalker and Moonhunter though, right? Like you said, we can do anything." He said, trying to be a bit more cheery than his usual. He felt good.  
  
His cheer was infectious, and she found herself smiling back at him in response.  
  
"Yeah, you're right. It can't be that hard." She said, clearing her breath just a bit.  
  
"We'll just have to give it our best shot. And make everyone proud." She said with a now more satisfied smile.  
  
"Going to live out your dreams of seeing everything life has to offer?" He asked, resting his head back a bit.  
  
"Obviously. But what about you? Still hoping to become clan champion?" She asked, humming in thought and tapping her fingers against her chin.  
  
"Well yeah. But there's plenty to do after that. It would be nice to take the title my mom did, though." Arne said as he stretched himself out and leaned a bit more on her, she was soft and warm as always, and he liked the feeling of her hands threading through his platinum hair.  
  
The mention of family brought something to mind regarding their plans for the future as she snuggled closer with him in the crevice they had snuck off to.  
  
"I'm supposed to get supervised by a friend of my family they made when they were in the marines. Adam Malkovich, you ever hear of him?" She asked.  
  
Arne's thought process worked quickly and it didn't take long for him to draw the cards he had in the proverbial deck.  
  
"Federal Army General, close friends to a lot of important staff in a Federal Program, meant to help educate people with extranormal abilities or talents outside of their species' norm. He fought in the Horus Rebellion, I think? A lot of border skirmishes too." He said, rattling off what his mind brought to the fore.  
  
"Right, Old Bird's gone and started a lot of the arrangements. I just need to show up, do a few tests and learn how things work. Should be easy right? I mean...he was close to my parents, so maybe he'll be like family, you know?" She said, talking a bit more quickly than normal. She was still antsy about the idea of leaving home.  
  
"And have you been told who you'll be staying with?" She asked, resting her head atop his and gazing down into his eyes.  
  
"Magna Alvissen. She was the person who taught most of fireteam raptor Noir how to fight; went from commando ops to freelancing to extranormal circumstances section before going into education. Started working more with kids than adults after Cylosis." He said, recalling everything he had been briefed about her in a hurry.  
  
"She'll also help me get back in touch with clan Grendakal and fitting myself into the ODOCR's citizenry system."  
  
But as he continued, he perked up a bit, feeling a bit brighter and more energetic than before and showing it with a small grin.  
  
"I'm honestly kind of excited. Just getting a chance to see the society I read so much about and talk to people who influenced my parents."  
  
Samus noted the way he kept on turning his attention back to Zurvduat as he spoke, never letting him leave his peripheral vision while he was still in the same room as he was. She noted herself the way he kept on talking to Mother Brain's Oculi about something she wasn't able to be privy to, but what struck her as the most needing of her attention is the way he went cold when the General briefly looked back at him.  
  
She felt a squeeze around her hand and heard a sharp inhalation before August Wings clacked her beak at the General and made him redirect his attention elsewhere.  
  
All at once, he started to relax and released his grip, lowering the arm he had brought up slightly; a cold and pointed exhalation curling out from his mouth as he hissed.  
  
"You really don't like it at home, do you?" She asked.  
  
"Elmorni is nice at least, most of the others. Not really. This was the first time half of them have ever had anything good to say about me. But Da-" He stopped and corrected himself, remembering the General's usual response to being given that appellation.  
  
"Zurvduat hasn't said a word to me. He just keeps, staring at me every now and then and I'm not sure if I did something bad or not. None of the usual criticisms, no comments, just...staring."  
  
He was right, he hadn't said a word to either him or her. That didn't fit with his usual habit of always having some put down up his sleeve to play, some way to make you feel bad no matter how much of a high of good feelings you were running off of at the moment.  
  
"Not even after everything we've gone through?" She asked hesitantly, getting a shake of the head back from him. 

"Why do you think he's talking to Mother Brain so much anyway?" He gave the thought of Zurvduat, and Mother Brain collaborating and shook his head in distaste.

"Something about how everyone else is stupid, it's what she always talks about." Samus said, making a face.

"Yeah, that sounds about right for her." Arne said, stretching until he found his hand touching a leg and turning his eyes upwards and almost stumbling onto Samus' lap when he realised whose legs they were.

Old Bird stood there, his hands stacked atop each other at the pommel of his cane and his old eyes staring down at them. His feathers ruffled a bit in the breeze of the room, and his humble robes swayed with his gentle movements as he offered a hand for Samus.

"Come on; there are more comfortable places to sit than the floor Samus." He said as Samus took his hand and stood up, giving a parsec-wide grin in response to seeing her father as she quickly gave him a hug and a happy cry of "Papa!". An embrace he was of course, swift to return.

Arne hadn't gotten up yet, unsure of whether the offer was one extended to him or if he should remain where he was. His face quivered a bit while he looked away until he found Old Bird's hand in his vision too, looking up towards him and seeing the gentle look in Old Bird's eye. He took the hand and pulled himself up, patting himself off and standing to Old Bird's other side, at least until Old Bird directed him to take Samus' hand instead.

"I am not your father, but you are her lover. Please come, we should discuss things now that there is a moment of lull in the festivities." He said, his paternal voice as warm as always as he began to walk them out of the room, the air following behind.

Everything seemed to be about normal, Old Bird not quite revealing what he was so keen on speaking to them about as they rounded the corner of a hallway. But Samus felt a presence rather close, familiar and unpleasant.

Another of Mother Brain's Oculi drones just about ambushed Samus by dropping from the ceiling, slipping in just for her sense-move to alert her of its presence and make her react on instinct. A yelp came out of her mouth, and she reflexively headbutted the Drone, a thundercrack from the motion of her head greatly exceeding the speed of sound audible across the room. Arne flinched, and Old Bird briefly stopped as the Oculi drone bounced off the wall from an impact harder than her missiles.

Without so much as a red impact welt on her forehead, Samus shook her head, narrowed her eyes, and growled directly at the Oculi Drone while it picked itself up off the ground.

"What do you want!? What is so important you had to drop in from nowhere?!" Samus shouted as she could feel the veins in her forehead, all bulging with irritation. Her skin wasn't red at first, but it was rapidly growing so with her angry flushing as she only stopped herself from clenching her fist when she remembered that she was holding the hands of other people.

"+Hmph, your temper remains the same as ever I see. I was hoping you had learned some control over it in your experience.+" She said, looking between the three and then zooming into Arne's face until he palmed its optic and shoved her out of the way.

"Don't get so close please, you are very much not high on my list of things I'd like to talk to right now." Arne said.

"+What have you uncovered regarding the Old Foe? Have you found the source of the breach? Why did you not think to place tracking systems on them?+" Mother Brain's questions came at them like a rotary weapon's volleys, and Samus had half a mind to punt the irritant directly out of her face at the first possible opportunity.

"Mother, that is quite enough out of you." Old Bird said with a harrumph, drawing a glare from the orb-like Drone almost immediately.

A stark coldness radiated from the Drone, its optics adjusting ever so slightly to make an acknowledgement of Re-Sekh's demands.

"+Debriefings should be more immediate when dealing with security issues as serious as this. It is highly irregular to wait until after a warrior has been deemed to have wasted sufficient ti-+" Mother Brain never got to finish the sentence before Old Bird raised a hand.

"I said enough, perhaps another day. But this day belongs to the children, not to you. I trust you will tell as much to Zurvduat?" He said sternly, getting a long, cold stare from the Drone in response.

"+I see that this matter is quite important to you. Very well, you will have your moment to speak to the children. We will have words later, you and I.+" She said with all the joy and enthusiasm of a child due to have their teeth pulled. Samus blew a raspberry at her in disrespect while Arne glared at her in a way that made it apparent he wanted her gone.

A moment of looking between the two was followed by Mother Brain's avatar slipping to the side and allowing them through as they passed behind a door into a garden room.

"Whoa...pretty." Arne said as he got a close look at the garden, gasping at the sight.

He saw flowers of countless species selected for their ability to coexist in harmony, chirping small animals, lazily hanging vines and leaves all warmly lit by the sunlight collected from outside and dispersed within. All built to surround a tree with low hanging branches; like an umbrella of leaves.

Elmorni was present as well, as were Spire, Armaud, and several representatives of other progenitor species. The glimmering white and spindly armoured frame of a Ylla that contained its energy form within like some manner of vaguely humanoid octopus turned to face them. The ethereal yet human-like features of a Faera whose green insectile wings fluttered behind them met their gaze as they looked down from their perch.

Arne could also see less familiar representatives such as a translucent white holographic projection of a humanoid moth-like figure, impossibly tall with gentle seeming features that offered a hand on chest bow to the two. A reptilian figure with a serpentine neck offered a closed handed bow and a flick of its tongue, the red-scaled beings tail flicking behind it idly. Arne would offer a wave as a tree-like being, tall and resplendent in earthy brown armour planted a long sword into the ground in acknowledgement of them.

Even those were only a few of the dozens of beings gathered to look upon them amid a circle. As they stepped into the centre of the formation, Old Bird let Samus go and stood at the opening in the pattern they had come through, floating upwards on a circular platform.

"What's all this?" Samus asked, her curiosity piqued by the presence of people she recognised as noteworthy from so many ancient and revered cultures. Old Bird, Elmorni, Spire, and Armaud of course; but also Vigo, Ystramir, I-Mon even if only in a digitised form, Uslaktir, and Drumnirik respectively; and so many others still. It made her feel small for a moment, but also very important. They wouldn't have gathered so many people of such stature if it weren't a particularly special occasion.

With a flicker, two more figures of each culture joined the gathered representatives. Grey Voice and August Wings for the Chozo, Deglos and Mortirk for the Alimbics and many more until the garden felt like a senatorial gathering hall. Only Spire remained alone, save for two robots he had constructed for his use that now flanked him on either side. Arne found the pointed absence of Zurvduat rather odd, but he had a hunch as to why they left him out of this gathering.

"Neophyte, Hatchling. You have done well for yourselves. Please, appear before us in your war skins." Old Bird started to the nodding agreement of the gathered delegates.

With a simple act of willpower, the zero suits and power armour of both teenagers manifested around them in golden and azure light, coalescing around their bodies save for their heads and providing the familiar sensation of impenetrably armoured safety within. Their senses adjusted for being encased in their armour, and the transition seemed to be so very seamless.

"You have achieved a height of warrior ability that shows you are ready to begin a new phase of training. One that we cannot provide for you here." Old Bird continued.

Samus beamed with pride at the compliments, her expression widening into an almost cocky grin as she basked in the warmth of her father's approval.

"-While you are already aware that we have selected associates of your birth families to guide you through the process of learning to socialise, we expect you not merely to get by with your studies but make friends. Make contacts, forge bonds of companionship to last your lifetime, and find your way in the cultures that birthed you.-" Elmorni said as Arne nodded with interest.

"-This will be a self-guided lesson. We cannot regulate how you learn to rejoin with your kind. But we will be keeping watch over you. And if you ever feel that you wish to return home for any period, know that you will be welcome with us.-" She said, creating a holographic image of the known universe coloured in with specks of territory representing the various countries.

"Know that there are also others, scattered across the universe we entrust like you: some older, many your age, some even younger. The time of our generation fades, but the universe yet needs guardians. Ones who can help push the paths of fate to better paths." Isa-Hesh said, the Chozoess trilling within her beak.

"But also know that we are proud of you, that we know that you will be able to accomplish your dreams of peace and betterment. You have done so much more than we could have imagined possible in this trial and I hope for nothing but the best from you." She said with pride, laying her hand on her chest and dipping her head down.

"We won't let you down, not ever mama." Samus said, thumping a hand against her chest plate and standing straighter proudly.

Samus wanted to show everyone that they were right to entrust her like this, that she and Arne could do everything they asked of them and then some. She saw herself turning the power granted to her to the cause of doing good, and her heart swelled. She would seek the injustices in the universe and undo them, she would lend her sword to those who had none, and everyone who called her name would know that everything would be okay.

Arne though had questions that he needed answers for, raising his hand to speak and being acknowledged by the whole of the council almost immediately. That gratified him immensely as unpleasant memories of Zurvduat and his clique pointedly ignoring him came to the forefront. He felt respected, which made him far less nervous about speaking up.

"What are going to be our rules of engagement? What can we do to help while still in training?" He said.

"-Of course, you are permitted to do what you feel is necessary so long as it does not contradict what your caretakers wish of you.-" Mortirk began, getting a frown out of Samus but a nod of understanding from Arne.

"But in extreme circumstances, you should feel at liberty to do what is right over what is legal. Law is a means to an end, if it ceases to serve justice, then it has no purpose." Vigo added.

"There will, of course, be those who will challenge this viewpoint. Those who see matters of legality as equivalent to morality. While you should understand them, you should not lose sight of your purpose." Ystramir said, raising a hand to get everyone's attention as they murmured among each other.

"Yeah, we're not looking to uphold the system or the way things are. We're here to make them better. And sometimes that means helping things change. It might even mean fighting people you thought you could trust." Spire said, his craggy voice solemn and low.

"So far nearly everything that you've met that can talk to you has wanted to help you in some way. However, some will try to take advantage of you on the outside. But, here's the important thing. While you shouldn't let people abuse you, I don't want you turning away people who need your help out of mistrust." Spire added, taking on a more avuncular tone towards the end of his statement.

Samus grinned at that, folding her arms and looking at them with an almost cocksure glance. Oh she liked the sound of this, the pulse of excitement racing within her as she considered the possibilities. She was sure that once she was actually at the ground level this would all be far more complicated than it seemed, but the thought of being entrusted with such responsibility made the burden of separation seem just that little bit lighter.

"Of course, this comes with more than a bit of responsibility. You'll need to make many difficult choices with answers we can't necessarily help you with." The N'Kren spoke up, Armaud's voice ringing loud and clear.

"You're going to need to learn to trust your own judgement while without getting arrogant. This is a harder lesson than you might think, believe me." Armaud cautioned, giving a gesture to urge them to steady themselves.

"I can handle it...I think...I...yes, I'll handle it." Arne said. Whereas Samus was eager to be in a position to decide these sorts of things on her own, the idea of independent decision making was still somewhat new to Arne. The firm hand of alimbic guidance had been drilled deep, and making these sorts of decisions himself would be much more challenging than what he was used to doing.

"You will have to learn to adjust to being away from the care of Progenitors. The society beyond is considerably more primitive than what you are accustomed to. But do not look down on them for it, they are young cultures who have much to learn, just like you. I expect you'll find many things in common." I-Mon's digitised form said, the data ghost pointing a finger between the pair.

"Of course, you will often find yourselves drawn to our work; scattered as it is through the stars. Take good care of it where you can. You are the shepherds of our legacy now, even being as young as you are." Uslaktir said.

"Most of the newer societies will seek to understand all they can of the artifice you have crafted. It will be up to you to decide how much of that knowledge they should be trusted with. Though I have already made my thoughts on that clear." Drumnirk grunted, adjusting the angle at which his blade bit into the ground.

"-They will ask of you many questions too, questions regarding every facet of y our life. Me? I recommend some distance. Don't let them get too deep into your personal lives unless you truly trust them.-" Deglos said.

Arne and Samus could at least, agree with them on that. Having everyone pry into how and why they were put on this course was not a pleasant prospect; especially when many people would never truly be able to understand something of that nature. And of course, who could forget those with much less than altruistic reasons to pry?

"You will also doubtlessly come into the crosshairs of those who left you orphans adrift in the stars." Grey Voice spoke up, commanding the attention of virtually the whole room. His almost regal voice demanding respect and attention.

First, he turned to Samus, he who had spent many years helping to learn the ways of war.

"Aira, you will need to be ready for battle with the Confederacy; Ridley's Inferno pack will not take the insult your family paid to them lightly. Weavel, in particular, remembers all too well the demotion he incurred for K-2L. Make ready to face him once more, Hatchling." He said sternly. Samus huffed a bit with annoyance.

"You don't need to tell me, Papa. If he wants to come at me, I'll give him what he's looking for." She said with a hint of irritation that made Grey Voice quirk a brow in response.

"And as for you, Sarxyl; those who struck at Cylosis will seek your silence. Those who play the game of cloak and dagger are loathe to find living witnesses. If you can, seek to reveal their identities to us neophyte; I would very much like to know why they wanted the Caesarian Lance so badly."

"I'll try to see what I can find. Maybe someone will be able to help once I'm there?" He offered before getting a gesture of approval in response from Grey Voice. He still found the usage of his Alimbic name unpleasant but bore with it for the time being.

"Now, I think that about wraps up everything we need to say. Is there anything any of you need to say before we do the ceremony? Just need to clear that out before we go ahead." Spire said.

In response to Spire's question, Elmorni and Old Bird raised one hand each. Of course they would have something to say.

"-Arne, Samus. The two of you are going through a phase of maturation. You aren't going to be children anymore. The things you feel will only grow stronger and more insistent, and you'll change in ways you might not expect. And I am so proud to watch the both of you mature.-" Elmorni said with a sweet voice as she lowered her hand and turned her nurturing gaze towards the two, her single red eye studying them as they shifted, her memory comparing them to how they were just a year ago.

"-Yet keep that in mind, you are still growing. You lack the weight of experience others will have. You are so very strong and brilliant, but you will need people you can trust to guide you on this journey. Never be afraid to ask for help just as you should never fear to offer it.-"

"-When you are among your own kind, remember that you will be seen as a child by most of them. They don't know you the way we do.-" Her head turned back towards her son in particular as he met her gaze and felt a bit of warmth.

"Won't that brigade spread word of what we did on Zoran though? That's sure to raise our profiles right?" He asked.

"Yeah, we saved the whole sector! People are probably already going to start talking about us. I'm just uh...not sure about all the attention, but I'll manage!" Samus said enthusiastically.

"-Yes, but they only know a legend. They don't know you as people. To most of the universe, we are but half-remembered stories. Never mistake fame for familiarity. You will inspire them, but you will need to do more than that to make friends.-" She said, nodding her head in response.

"-But I am sure you'll both be able to do it. You are both filled with such compassion, such drive and such tremendous potential. I have no doubt that your achievements on Zoran will just be the start of many more.-" She concluded warmly, bowing her head and allowing Old Bird to speak at last.

"Thank you mom, I won't let you down." Arne said, straightening himself with genuine pride now.

"Papa, are you going to say something?" Samus asked with a curious glint in her eyes.

"Thank you, Elmi. And of course Samus" He said.

"Ystramir is right. Many will see things differently from both of you. They will question your commitment to justice for all; they will insist that many evils are necessary or are simply the way things are and must be."

His words were eloquent but kindly as always. He did not raise his voice, he felt no need to shout or scream. He didn't even need to ask them to listen; such came naturally to both of them.

"It will be crucial for you to understand their viewpoints, but you shouldn't let them convince you that it is right to oppress and allow for suffering where none need exist." He said, turning towards Samus in particular but not letting Arne out of his sight either.

With Samus, he looked upon her with fatherly adoration. She now stood tall and braver than ever, even if her fire still needed to be tempered. She made him delighted to be able to call her his daughter and the small, loving smile she gave him made his heart feel so very warm.

"You will have to remember to look beyond the actions of individuals and to see the root cause of problems. If you simply cut the branches of malice, you will find it growing again and again. Only by looking at the whole can you find the roots you will need to pull."

He paused briefly to let them absorb the wisdom he had offered.

"You will often find yourself challenging powerful authorities with deep systemic power. You will butt heads with many who demand obedience without question. But if you follow the paths of justice you have been taught, you shan't go astray." He said, bowing before the two of them.

"And as such, it is my pleasure to grant to the two of you; the honour of being recognised as leaving childhood behind for the tumultuous years of youth."

All of the gathered ancients offered them various forms of bows and genuflections as the lights in the room began to dim, only for a series of runes to begin to glow above each of them. Samus and Arne found themselves turning around, oohing and aahing at the sight of the runes starting to circle around them.

Arne gulped and breathed steadily to calm his nerves, accepting that he was ready for this, while Samus had to hold herself still lest she try and leap into it headfirst to grab at the moment with both hands.

"For your achievements in both age and deed, we recognise you as youths of our commonwealth. For your heroism and gathered wisdom, we pronounce you to have left behind the days of childhood. We pronounce you free to wander with guidance, and ask of you to use this freedom to ensure that of others." Old Bird declared, raising his hands into the air as the runes closed towards them before surrounding them and flowing into them.

"You are hereby gifted with the mark of the Youth. Your armour and ships are henceforth forever freed from our control. We entrust you with the responsibility of the power at your disposal, and bid your good fortune on your journey to adulthood." He concluded as the two looked at their suits and then towards him, Samus giving a thumbs up while Arne pumped his fist experimentally and nodded.

"We're ready whenever you are." Samus said.

_Two hours later_

  
Samus and Arne had so far, had a blast after rejoining the festivities as things were winding down. Though one should probably steer clear of referring to the party in such terms given their difficulty with slang. After rejoining the party, they'd mingled with so many new faces. A handful of the other patrons were even close to their age. A refreshing change of pace from all the impossibly wisened elders that they had been mingling with so far.

Eighteen hours in and only a scant few hours remained in their full day as freshly minted teenagers. They had just about finished with a game of psiball with a quartet of Faeran youths, two Ylla, a Florathim of Druminirik's species and finally a somewhat crustacean-like techno-organic youngling of the Rillar species. Five vs five, with Samus and Arne on the same team as one of the Ylla, the Rillar, and a Green haired Faeran.

They had darted around each other, enhanced bodies and reflexes guiding the ten youths in their movements while Spire, Armaud, Elmorni, Old Bird, and a few other elders and some too young to play with them supervised. With the score almost tied up and the game about to end, it was all down to one last play.

Catching the ball tossed to him by his Ylla partner with a mentally guided motion, Arne backflipped out of the way of one of the winged Faera as they tried to tackle him. As much as he'd like to wrestle around with Ysarmoch some other time, he wasn't about to let the wiry frame of the pointed eared golden-haired boy get his hands on him just yet. However nice said hands looked. He was mindful of his fuzzy, soft-looking moth wings trying to box him in of course, and the Faeran's graceful limbs moved quite seamlessly in the sporty coverings he wore. But Arne had seen real battle and could manoeuvre with a bit less hesitancy, and he took full advantage of that.

"-Keep an eye on your flanks, Arne.-" Ygrak said, getting his attention to his left briefly as brown tendrils started to crowd towards his vision.

With a kickflip out of the way of the Florathims twisting branches, he feinted a pass to the Green haired Jusley right before he dodged the incoming Ylla's tentacles.

"Thanks mom!" He managed while he threaded the needle of tentacles headed his way. The two were a bit too slow, he mused slightly smugly as he brought his focus back down to earth emotionally and landed on a hand before righting himself with a cartwheel. He had to be sure not to lose himself to the fun he was having.

"-Don't hesitate to press your speed further. Yours are limbs of lightning and your movement is the wind itself. Don't let yourself be predictable.-" Ygrak added, getting a brief nod of acknowledgement from Arne.

It was all a friendly game, and he felt genuinely good about getting this opportunity to relax while still moving around. Even without either his armour or his zero suit, he was still moving faster than most bullets, a speeding blur. Movement at such speeds was a touch odd without his helmet due to outracing his own sound, but he found his way through the formation around him. Arne zig-zagged as he passed the sphere to Samus with an underhanded toss; satisfied even when he got tackled by the blue-haired Faera Eyri and hit the ground with a rather undignified "oof!"

"Hey!~" They said, their androgynous and ethereal appearance getting a flush out of him as they had him pinned for a moment. They gave a cheeky grin and tilted their head in a way that adjusted much of their shoulder-length hair to one side; runic face painting marks shifting with their expression.

"Hi." He said, slightly meekly. This position he found, was just a little bit compromising.

Samus, of course, had caught the orb, willing it towards her with her growing confidence with her psionic abilities. Seeing a formation forming to try and block her way, the golden-haired heir of the Chozo somersaulted straight overhead, leaping clean across a distance of more than a hundred meters without effort.

"Keep your comrades in sight Aira. This is a team sport. Don't jump ahead without support when you can rely on the strength of your comrades." Grey Voice said to her, briefly getting a nod of recognition from the hatchling.

"I know papa." She said as she relied on her sense-move to find the green Faeran zipping close by.

"Samus, I'm open!" They said, waving frantically towards her as she leapt over Ysarmoch and kicked off of his shoulders before grabbing the vines of the Florathim and swinging towards her companion.

The ball passed over to Samus' companion and Jusley looped over a flush of Ylla tendrils, Arne jumping in to feint a pass. Just long enough for Jusley to get the ball back to Samus as she backflipped out of Eyri's way.

"You are remembering the value of maintaining momentum, excellent work Aira." Grey Voice said. The very thought of getting that sort of praise from Somek making her just about beam with pride while she quickly appraised the opposition put around her. She was surrounded by too many to get through if they were the only ones focusing on her, but as her Ylla partner arrived, she had an idea and grinned.

"Sclax, bounce formation!" She said. Dribbling the purple sphere between herself and the Ylla, Samus dove beneath one of the red-haired Faera; a girl by the name of Thelchyr that Samus and Arne had both found beautiful. Thelchyr was smart as a whip though and yanked some loose objects nearby telekinetically to smack into the ball, catching it in hand while her crimson moth wings fluttered behind her. The seamless motion making her tonic flap a bit and giving Samus a nice view of her short-sleeve clad arms.

"Nice try Samus, but I'm just better at this game!" She said with a quirked brow and a spin of the ball. The taunt had its desired effect as Samus squinted her eyes and snorted. Oh is that how she wanted it?

A signal was given to Arne, prompting him to vault from behind Thelchyr to get in front of her. "Hey there, I thought I should put that claim to the test!" He said, calmly shooting his hand out to snatch the ball from her.

"Too slow groundpounder!" She said, flying up with the ball in hand, the Rillar team mate shifting its skin and outfit to become visible as their flea like legs carried them alarmingly close to Thelchyr, getting widened eyes of shock from her. She was just fast enough to dodge around, but Samus jumped up, grabbed at Thelchyr's leg, tugging her to the side for her free hand to call the ball towards her right before she used Thelchyr's leg to pole vault herself towards the objective.

"Maybe you should put more time into playing than bragging?" She said as she slam-dunked the ball with a thought and a swing of her arm and landed on her feet in a three touch pose. Game, set, match! The telepathic blare of the sirens announced her team's victory and she just about jumped up for joy.

"Yes! Come on, friends! Group hug!" She said, not even slightly regretting her words as her four teammates just about glomped her. Staying upright even with the tackle, she gave a hearty laugh and let them all share a squeeze.

Ysarmoch and his teammates approached the group as they broke from the hug. The two could feel no ill-will coming from them with the narrow loss, and all five of them seemed to be in good cheer. He offered a bow of appreciation, his shimmering blue eyes catching both Arne and Samus' attention in all the right ways.

"Good game, hope to play something like that with you all again soon! Maybe with full sized teams too." He said, chuckling a bit.

"I'd really like that! Thank you so much for offering!" She said, returning the bow.

"You guys were pretty good, almost had us beat there. Wow." Arne said, exhaling sharply while Thelchyr nodded in appreciation.

"-Well played Children, a flawless game.-" Elmorni said, warmly spreading her arms out to wrap them around many of the youngsters and holding them against her, Old Bird following suit.

"Care to join us Somek?" Old Bird asked with a slight laugh while the plates of the carapace covering Old Bird's neck flattened against his body. A lizard-like vertical eyelid blinked a few times, and the gangly, grey feathered elder shook his head.

"-I will also pass for now. But I appreciate the thought.-" Ygrak said.

"Come on, live a little." Spire laughed.

Armaud though, put words into practise and boosted several of the winning team onto her broad plated shoulders. "Come 'ere you little prototypes." She said, getting excited laughter out of them as they sat on her shoulders, Samus putting her head between her legs.

Arne though, felt a sudden chill. That sense of animal panic started to build in him as the hair on the back of his neck stood straight up like a geemer making a threat display. He began to breathe heavily, backing away from the hug and wiping at his briefly sweating brow.

The source of his fear made itself known as he turned his head to see the General starting to approach. The Alimbic commander shimmering into existence as he manifested himself in the room via teleportation systems with his hands behind his back, one of Mother Brain's oculi drones following him by his side.

He had a hard swallow and clutched at his chest while Samus felt her blood briefly boil. What was he doing here now of all times? She had about half a mind to bite his head off, or at least see how far she could pull it from his torso.

"Were you watching us?" Arne hesitated to ask as everyone turned to the General like he had dragged in a corpse and tossed it in their midst. Any levity had disappeared almost instantly, and Mother Brain's presence only compounded the sensation of ominous dread.

"-Primoris, come to me. We have things to discuss. Duties that you need to be reminded of before you leave my sight.-" He said in his usual bone-chilling psychic voice.

"-I have spoken at length to the General, reviewing your performances. Your lack of emotional distance has left you dangerously dependent. We will need to correct this before you leave our immediate care.-" Mother Brain announced as Elmorni just about snapped her head towards the pair with a sudden cold fury.

"-If you have not noticed, they saved the sector. We are looking for results, not the perfection of methodology.-" Elmorni said with a plainly indignant tone.

"-Inefficiently. The foe had been allowed to slip away and has disappeared to the winds. They also found evidence of treason in our midst, yet neither of you has been able to find conclusive evidence leading to their identity.-" Zurvduat's cold outrage was unpleasant as always, the tension in the room starting to dial itself up with every syllable he pronounced slowly.

"- Regardless of whatever your cowardly council has proclaimed; these two have not succeeded in their mission. I will not allow you to send them into the wild without correcting these weaknesses.-"

"-We will make only minor adjustments that should ensure that they remain on the correct path. There will be no repeats of these failings, and they will resolve the outstanding problems with due swiftness.-" Mother Brain added as Arne started to shy away from their gaze.

He was scared, not knowing what to do or how to respond. He felt miserable, doubt creeping into himself as that chill began to dull into a pervasive ache. Did he really accomplish something to be proud of?

Samus wanted to shout something at them, she felt the need to scream at them. Every beat of her heart was getting faster and pounding louder with sheer outrage. She wasn't going to let this continue, but what could she do? They wouldn't listen to her.

"Papa, help me." She said to Re-Sekh as his expression got very cold indeed.

"-See? Relying on others once again; we must work to foster further independence.-" Zurvduat mentally snarled.

"That will be enough Zurvduat." Re-Sekh said.

"You can't just keep on bullying us every time we don't do exactly what you want! What's your problem!?" Samus shouted, her choler at its apex as she started to get red with anger.

"-Did I ask you for your opinion, girl?-" Zurvduat scoffed.

"-General! What is the meaning of this sort of language towards Samus?!-" Elmorni hissed, no longer wishing to be silent.

"-He is correct in that Samus' remarks were not asked for.-" Mother Brain said flatly.

"And yet they are ultimately necessary given that you are asking for a radical departure in her and Sarxyl's training regimen. We have already come to an agreement and will not have you trampling it." Grey Voice said after an emphatic cough to get everyone's attentions.

"-I've had enough of this backtalk. Arne, you are coming with me.-" Zurvduat growled, approaching Arne rapidly and brushing aside Ysarmoch's team and staring down with hostile intent at Armaud.

Arne clutched more tightly onto Armaud's shoulder while Spire started to stomp towards the Commander, Mother Brain's Oculi fixating on Samus as more of her drones began to approach with haste.

"-Your departure will be delayed only slightly, but this procedure will be necessary.-" Mother Brain informed her flatly as Samus curled her hands into fists.

"I'm not going! You can't make me!" Samus snarled.

"-You are and I can.-" Mother Brain replied.

"No, I will not allow it." Old Bird tapped his cane against the floor and reared himself up higher, letting his hood fall away while his carapace crest stuck out in a threat display. Samus nodded, folding her arms and forming her armour suit around herself, punching her arm cannon into her gauntlet and making her visor flash with violent intent.

"I don't want to go..." Arne said softly, almost seeming to shake Zurvduat out of his focus and do a double take towards him.

"-Excuse me, boy? Are you attempting to reject my direct orders?-" Zurvduat's voice was starting to get more heated, an unpleasant vibration in his psychic tone that made Arne's stomach do twists. He refused to let go of Armaud, and soon Zurvduat reached towards him with an open hand that made Arne gasp, freezing as the General's plated, warm hand reached for his neck and pulled him off.

"-You will learn to break this habit of disobedience forthwith when I am through with you child. Do you think that just because you keep company with the Chozo and your unruly, ill tempered barbarian of a companion you are entitled to go against me so openly?-" He said as he put him down and loomed over Arne who shielded his head from Zurvduat as he raised a hand.

"-Then let them see the price of your defiance.-" Zurvduat laid a hand on Arne's chin and pushed his head until he was directly facing him. A hand of his being raised with its palmed opened and shocked horror reverberating across the room.

A swing was made, and Arne wailed as he tried to shield himself. He knew what was coming, he had felt this impact endless times, so often that he marked every day it never came. He prepared to shut down, to crawl into his shell and hide until it was over. It's what saved him so many other times.

But a second passed and he had felt nothing, opening his eyes and seeing Elmorni holding Zurvduat's wrist while Grey Voice had pushed his staff into his chest to move him back just as Samus had brandished her cannon at his face and Spire had moved in, ready to tackle him down at the first opportunity. Mother Brain had backed slightly from the situation, while Zurvduat's aligned Alimbics stood unpleasantly close to Elmorni, ready to move.

Quiet settled into the room as everyone waited for each other to make a move. The youngsters had backed away; frightened whispering began to permeate throughout the room, and the sense of imminent danger hung heavy in the Distant Sight like the sword of Damocles. But for Arne, there was also a feeling of relief even as he shook slightly at the tingling heat of Zurvduat's sheer anger. He wasn't going to be hurt, not today.

"Is this how you raise your child, General?" Old Bird's words were filled with so much scorn that Samus seemed almost shocked. A slow-boiling sensation of outrage flickered from him, seeking to escape through any means of venting.

Arne was still shaking, he felt so small, weak, and alone before the Alimbic he considered his chief father. Even when in a room with all these people who cared for him, he felt powerless. The gaze of Zurvduat into his own eyes still inspiring dread to the point that he could bring himself to meet it head-on. Pain, red and raw, echoed dully in his face and across his body, phantom memories of agonies inflicted over a lifetime.

Samus was seething; she had never been so angry in her life. The Phoenix inside of her's fires stoking into a brilliant inferno of rage. She was going to kill Zurvduat if she was given half the chance, and Zurvduat could feel it. She smirked at that briefly beneath her helmet. Good, let him feel her anger. He deserved to feel every iota of her fury.

"-How long have you been beating my son, Zurvduat?-" Elmorni asked with a cold menace. There would be no hiding answers from her now, not when he had acted so brazenly in front of her very eye.

"-Unhand me at once, subordinate.-" He said coldly. This defiance from Elmorni baffled him, what manner of mutinous ideas has Old Bird placed in her mind he wondered? But he failed to realise that this cold anger was all her own.

"-You are interfering in a process that does not concern you, Mystromagus. We have only the best intentions in mind for the Hatchling and the Neophyte.-" Mother Brain protested before Old Bird waved both of them off with a dismissive shake of his hand.

"No, neither of you will be going anywhere with either of them." Old Bird's tone made it clear he wasn't asking. He made his demand, and he fully expected them to listen.

"As a matter of fact, I do not want Arne in your care any further. I will be speaking to the peer council about this. Your days of terrorising this child have come to an end. Release him from your charge, now." Old Bird said harshly. He would not take anything less than absolute acquiescence on this issue.

Arne dared to hope for a moment, though doubt coloured it with uncertainty. Zurvduat was his father at the end of the day, even if he refused to accept the title. What would Arne do without him altogether? Without being able to make Zurvduat see things his way, to prove his worth and value to him?

Samus though, was basking in the vindication. She never liked Zurvduat, not from the second she laid eyes on him. Every move, every breath he took reeked of the arrogant bullying demeanour she despised. Long had she dreamed of punching him in his face, and the sensation of his surprise tinged outrage at this defiance gladdened her down to her soul.

"-You...you dare intervene in my affairs old man?! What could you possibly know about what I have had to do to keep this child in line? To keep him focused on his appointed task instead of constant whining!?-" Zurvduat snarled before Elmorni cut him off.

Elmorni was cold in her assessment of Zurvduat, the Mystromagus turning his wrist aside and floating slightly upwards, offering an arm to Arne who gladly clung to her in response. Thirteen years old he may be, but he still had an infantile desire for being embraced by her. She was warm, safe, comfortable, and he felt ever so slightly less afraid of Zurvduat in her embrace.

"-You have been doing this for years, haven't you? The sudden loss of milk teeth. The fear of seeing you raise your hand in his direction, the terror he has for you. Zurvduat, how could you do this to my son?-" She said with a scornful, accusatory note, petting Arne's hair gently and telepathically whispering soothing notes.

"-And you knew it was wrong, didn't you? You've been hiding your abuses from the distant sight so that I would never know. No wonder why so much of his time is shrouded in fog when I gaze upon it.-" She continued, the realisation making her go from frosty to arctic in tone.

Samus, of course, was far from cold in her anger. She had yet to temper it into some chill blade of winter, but the hot rage from her was more than enough to get Zurvduat to pause and genuinely consider her fury. Even Arne was taken aback from it, and Old Bird briefly gave her a look of concern.

"Leave now, before I get mad." Samus snarled at him as her power suit hummed with collected energy in her cannon. She was already charging a shot, and Zurvduat seemed to be at a loss for words with how brazen she was being. To make a move so bold as to threaten him directly was unprecedented, almost unexpected. But of course, she would do something so bold and brazen.

"I will do it, don't think I'm bluffing." She said, her face a feral snarl beneath her helmet and her blue eyes giving Zurvduat a stare so intense that it could just about cut through Cosmium. She had plenty of confidence built up from holding her own against the Sunstalker and Moonhunter, what could an old Alimbic General be before that?

"I told you to take care of the kid! What were you thinking!?" Spire said, throwing a hand forward and pointing accusatively at the General.

"Your methods of discipline are barbaric; I will not have it continue in my sight." Grey voice added, Zurvduat taking a moment to look at everyone staring back at him, accusing and disapproving eyes boring into him. Even Ysarmoch folded his arms and glared up at him while Arne felt safe enough to meet his adoptive father's gaze briefly.

Arne looked to be almost as surprised by all the positive attention and support he was getting. People cared for his safety, his happiness. He was loved and wanted, at least here. He didn't need to be so afraid of Zurvduat anymore. And why should he? He had managed to see off the Sunstalker and Moonhunter. By any reasonable definition, he had proven himself one thousand times over.

And with that new surge of spine, he hardened his expression. "I'm not going with you, General. I don't need you." He said, each syllable feeling almost like a drug, tantalising and addictive in the promises of independence they offered. That he could forge his own bonds and find his own community, and stand on his own without the menace of the General looming over him, he, of course, didn't want to push him out of his life entirely, but maybe now he would understand that he wasn't going to let himself get hit anymore. At least, not now when he felt safe in doing so.

With even Arne having the backbone to stand up to him, Zurvduat turned towards Mother Brain, asking her for guidance in this situation. Their plan had backfired terribly, though she yet retained her trust. But no answer was forthcoming, Mother Brain had overplayed her hand and would need to reconsolidate and restrategise. She would let him take the heat for now, but she offered him her assurance that their day would come sooner than later.

"-So be it then, I will concede on this issue for the time being given how strongly you feel about it.-" Mother brain said, bowing her Oculi Drone's head and starting to slink back.

Making the telepathic equivalent of a scowl, Zurvduat snatched his arm out of Elmorni's grip and began to pull back. "-This is not over, we will have words about this. I will have my eye on you all, count on it.-" The General said with a cold, harsh voice as he slinked away.

Samus felt triumphant; she had done two great things today and her confidence that she could be the hero everyone needed only grew. The boiling anger in Samus' chest banished itself, the evils being done to Arne would no longer occur, she was sure of it. She held her head up high, and let the brief satisfaction of a job well done fill her heart.

She dismissed her armour once more, slipping to the ground and offering a hand for Arne who nodded and released himself from Elmorni's embrace. "Are you okay?" She said as she opened her arms with the gift of a hug, seeing him make the telltale signs of shaking and shallow breaths. She knew that sort of traumatic pain all too well, and the thought that it could be caused by someone he trusted made her sick to the stomach.

Arne looked around and felt warm, understanding that he was safe here and that the chill of his terror was no longer the only sensation he need feel. He looked at the hug, and he formed his lips into a gentle smile as he took her into it as she had just some hours before when he noticed she was in pain.

The two's embrace was electric, an affirmation that they weren't alone in the cosmos. There was someone who understood, someone who would offer a shoulder to cry on and have each other's backs at any time. Someone whom they could bare their hearts towards without feeling as though they were putting themselves at risk.

It was a gentle moment, he cherished her support, and she adored his. In the year they'd known each other, they had come far indeed. And now they could trust each other enough to open themselves up, to let the empathic warmth and affection flow between them. The sensation melted into them like an electric blanket that seeped into their very bones and gave them a fluttering feeling in their core.

It was comforting, and for a time, both felt like this was a moment that could and should last for eternity.

But alas, there was too much to do, and the day was getting old. Their time together had to come to an end, and with great reluctance, they parted from one another and stared into the other's eyes.

"I'd like to visit whenever you're free, Samus?" Arne said, his mind turning to the inevitability of the two having to go their separate ways for the final stage of their education.

"I was going to ask you the same thing, Arne. But, I think I'd really, really like that." She said back as she stroked his hair and got a purr of affection in response from him.

"I'll have so many new friends to show you when we can see each other again. I just know it." Samus smiled at the thought of that, steeling herself with the hope that she'd fit in and be able to mingle with the general public.

"And well, I'm hoping I will too. Maybe we could have another party like this when our birthday comes up, right?" Arne endeavoured to hope, already trying to think of how the two could continue to enjoy their shared birthday like this.

"That sounds like fun! Don't keep me waiting for your plans, though. Or I'll think up my own." She said with a teasing bit of menace and a devilish Cheshire grin.

"Now you're going to make me want to see what that's like." He shared a giggle with her before they calmed down.

"We'll call each other too. Hoping we won't be too busy out there..." He said with a small laugh.

"We'll make time. I'm sure." She said, rolling her eyes shut.

There would always be time.


	19. Prodigy: Chapter 1: Arrival (SA)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Samus starts her Socialization education at the Federation Prodigal Program.

_Prodigal Program HQ Entrance, Zellemite City, Planet Gyldaine, Suramil System, Andromeda Galaxy, Popular Republican Union of Esdemir, Galactic Federation: 14th of September, 50,013._

  
Samus sniffled slightly as she looked at the entrance of the Prodigal Program Headquarters, the illustrious Prodigonia building. The number of people was almost overwhelming, so many stray emotions had to be shut out, so many conversations were happening all around her that her superhuman hearing was working overtime to filter out things she didn't want to hear. But saying her goodbyes to Arne, for the time being, had given her a sense of melancholy matched only by the realisation that she was going to have to let go of Old Bird's hand sooner than later.  
  
"Are you ready, Samus?" He said gently to the young girl at his side as she clenched her fingers around his gauntleted palm a little tighter.  
  
She was for the first time in her life, unsure of the answer to that particular question. Would the people she would meet be as kind to her as Arne or the other youths? Could she really make friends? She cast her attention back to the elderly Chozo's eyes, then towards August Wings, War Hawk, and Grey Voice behind the two of them. She felt the warmth Old Bird had towards her, their support and approval, and loosened her grip on his hand.  
  
"I think so...we'll still speak regularly right?" She asked, turning back towards him with pleading blue eyes. She knew the answer, she didn't even need the Distant Sight to be confident in it. Yet she wanted to hear him say it, to banish the quiver she felt at the thought of letting go of his hand.  
  
"Always, I expect to speak to you at least twice every day. First, when the day begins, and then again when it ends. And if you ever need my help, do not be afraid to ask." He said, stroking her blonde hair gently and resting his beak upon her scalp, a gesture repeated by August Wings while War Hawk and Grey Voice kept a respectful distance.  
  
"Of course, the point of this exercise is to develop enough self-sufficiency to manage without calling upon our assistance. While you have more than demonstrated your mastery of battle and exploration; you must also learn how to master socialisation without our guidance." Grey Voice reminded her. Part of her wasn't entirely fond of hearing that, but she understood the wisdom of what he said. How could she help to guide and protect the universe if she could not hold a conversation with its typical denizens?  
  
"I was once in your nest, Samus." War Hawk said, the young Chozo's exoskeletal crest flicking upwards and her spindly limbs swaying slightly for emphasis. "Few people in happy homes wish to leave it, but rest easy knowing that we wouldn't send you here if we didn't know if it was right for you." She said, her sisterly voice getting a grin out of Samus as she nodded in response.  
  
"And of course, be sure to introduce us to all the lovely friends you make, Hatchling. I would love to meet them." August Wings said with her kindly voice that made Samus feel so very warm inside. Like the pleasant sensation of hot soup going down her throat and resting in her stomach, she felt more confident about the steps she was making and turned back to Old Bird.  
  
"Let's get going. I'm sure they're waiting for us." Samus said as she looked ahead, tapping her free hand's fingers against her thigh as they walked forwards. A slight nervous tic, but one she managed to still after a quick breathing exercise.  
  
The building that served as the entry was large and stylishly designed in a way that drew her attention almost immediately. Gently designed arches, green spaces, carefully integrated holographic lights, shimmering doors and art pieces that she was sure she'd be able to get better once she had time to study them. With a glance, she ascertained that the builders of the campus had made it to accommodate a wide variety of possible forms of life. And that the place was already quite busy, students and faculty going from place to place as their daily routines required of them.  
  
It was all almost overwhelming, but it was also apparent that the makers of this place couldn't measure up to the same standards of Zebes of Arganti. She quite literally didn't feel the same magic seeping through the buildings; her eyes only detecting merely ordinary colours and the pleasant thrum of mystic and psychic energies absent. She hadn't even noticed such things before; it was just how everything worked. Now though, the world was a bit quieter and greyer than she was used to, the buzz of psychic activity less constant and meaningful.  
  
"There are so many people here...sacred spirits...I hope this Adam won't have to wait too long for us." Samus said as she ran the numbers in her head. Even without her suit computers, she found the math trivial. Based on the flow of people she observed and the buildings' sizes and shapes and what she knew of the place, she concluded that at least one hundred and thirty-nine million seven hundred and fifty-three thousand and eight hundred personnel and students were spread throughout the campus here. A city in the guise of an educational facility to gather those with peculiar talents and abilities and provide them with both training and education in a welcoming environment. At least, that was what the brochure said.  
  
The doors slid open in recognition of the approaching quintet, and the voices of the gathered personnel and students going through the main building all went silent. She had heard them speaking of various classes, social busywork, news, and rumours of special guests coming to them. But it was clear they never expected four Chozo and a human girl in a Chozo made power suit. The stares they gave her made her feel somewhat uncomfortable, and she could tell that they were trying to figure out why the ancients would bring a human girl with them.  
  
Even the Aurora Unit that managed the facility; 1933; went silent, the cybernetic brain seeming to pause all of their operations at once. Their holographic avatar that sat in atop a pedestal at the back of the entry room shifted to regard the five with three ruby coloured optics, the sensation of its psychic pulsings feeling diminutive compared to what Mother usually made.  
  
"-You must be the Chozo delegation then. Which would make you...-" Aurora Unit 1933 started before Samus raised her hand to interrupt and speak her own name.  
  
"Samus Aran." She said with a beaming smile, getting one blue-haired pointed eared Aelva sitting at a desk going over files to choke on her recaf the second she heard the surname.  
  
"The daughter of the guy who took out Ridley and the _Scourge of Heaven_?" She could hear people from across the building say, whispering as if she wouldn't be able to pick up on their words but loud and clear to her ears.  
  
"There were no survivors on K-2L, how is that possible?" Another said. She was starting to feel more self-conscious now, her cheeks beginning to tint rose.  
  
"She grew up nicely, wow." Someone her age said as she briefly turned towards them and gave the girl who passed the comment to her a smile and wave.  
  
"Is that Chozo power armour she's wearing? Have they ever made something like that for humans?" She heard, frowning at the way they spoke of her, not even asking how she was, just speculating about what she was wearing.  
  
"So young to be given that kind of tech too...what do you think she did to earn it?" She started to feel uncomfortable, all this attention starting to make her self-aware in a way that made her want to step out of the limelight. An unpleasant shrinking sensation in her gut as it twisted into knots and she stepped back to be a bit less visible.  
  
"Some kind of simulacrum maybe? Honour the dead of K-2L? Not sure what the Chozo would be doing with a human girl." One said. Now they'd done it. She almost choked on the air she was breathing in and started to clench her fist before Old Bird laid a hand on her shoulder.  
  
"I'm not a simulacrum! I'm Samus Eabha Aran! Daughter of Virginia Orla Aran and Rodney Liam Aran! Stop talking about me like I can't hear you!" She at first seethed, but knowing what Old Bird was expecting of her, her tone died down slightly into more of a plea rather than a command.  
  
She gestured towards her family, sucking air into her lungs deeply as she adjusted the ponytail on the back of her head with her gauntleted fingers.  
  
"These are my adoptive parents! Re-Sekh, Somek-Ka, Isa-Hesh and Horath-Baast! They helped take care of me after picking me up from K-2L after...after the..." She hesitated. The rush of emotions she was feeling made her see the flash of purple, feeling the heat and flame of the world burning around her. Phantom memories of fire and dust made her skin tingle and her breath grow short while her chest grew tight.  
  
She gulped, realising people were listening to her and that she had to speak. "...Attack." She said, pointing towards them and trying her best to wipe off the angry look that had formed on her face. She tried to push back the memories that afflicted her, moving beyond their reach as best as she could while grabbing for happier times; trying to think of how excited she was to let other people know about how great they were.  
  
"They're...the nicest people in the universe, even if Somek is a bit grumpy at times." She said, exhaling sharply from her nose. She had gotten everyone's attention at least.  
  
"-Yes, it would seem that there has been an unfortunate tendency to gossip about those whom it is our duty to welcome with open arms. Please, accept my forgiveness for the awkward introduction.-" The Aurora Unit said in their formal but friendly genderless tone, softly digitised and pleasantly warm. So much unlike Mother Brain even if their psychic voice lacked Mother's overwhelming power and presence. Immense by the standards of modern society to be sure, but it was like a red dwarf next to a quasar compared to Mother Brain.  
  
"Well, now that young Samus has introduced herself, we are looking for the one expected to watch over her while we busy ourselves with our work. Now, we could simply pry, but I think it would be more polite to ask where we could find Adam Ivashchenko Malkovich?" Old Bird said, patting Samus on her shoulder reassuringly as the room tried to observe in silence rather than try to talk behind the back of the girl who could hear a pin drop from another building if she wished.  
  
"-He is already here in fact, he has been waiting eagerly to meet you I believe, honoured Elder.-" The Aurora unit said happily as a blue-haired man in a white dress uniform stepped forward, adjusting his peaked cap and easing through the crowd that had gathered.  
  
He was tall to be sure, with surprisingly youthful features that wouldn't be out of place in a university student for someone who had spent as long as he did in army service, but Samus could tell that he was someone who insisted on always looking to be the prime age for combat. Not some musty desk jockey. Had he not been four times her age, Samus might have even hazarded to call him handsome.  
  
He offered a salute and a bow to the Chozo. "Honoured ones." He said with the utmost deference drilled into him by army service.  
  
"Oh please, I've told you this before, no need for such formalities. I don't call you General do I?" August Wings laughed.  
  
"My apologies, it seemed only right. Now, to business. You must be Samus then? I knew your parents quite well. It's a privilege to meet you." He said with an extended hand that Samus stared at for a hot minute after she nodded and smiled at his words.  
  
She looked at the gesture and tried to think about what he might be asking for her to do. Some sort of psionic greeting? She mused for a second before dismissing the idea; she could sense no psychic abilities emanating from him. Was it an offer to wrestle with him? She doubted it, even if she fought him naked while he brought out his officer's power suit she'd crush him into a pulp without trying. Was it perhaps a bioscan? His gloves didn't look like they had any biometric devices. Maybe the Distant sight could tell her what to do...  
  
"Ah...my apologies, this is a handshake. Just hold onto my hand and follow my movements." He said as her eyes lit up with realisation all at once and embarrassment flushed into her cheeks. It was a social gesture, of course. She followed his instructions and gripped his hand with a light touch that still made him briefly wince.  
  
"Careful with that grip strength there." He said after pulling back his hand and rubbing it. His expression though, told her that he didn't mind too much. She was young after all; mistakes were to be expected, and the short laugh he made put her at ease as she giggled back.  
  
"The rest of you, please return to your tasks." Adam said, getting a number of nods from the rest of the room as everyone cleared their throats or did the equivalent thereof and filed into their routines.  
  
"Now, please c-" Adam started before Samus cut him off, her psychic senses already telling her what he was going to say.  
  
"With you to my accomodations yeah?" She said with a grin.  
  
"Ah, precognitive. Yes though." He said, making a signal for the procession to follow.  
  
But as they started to walk again, Samus briefly caught sight of something shimmering in the corner of her eye and turned to see something mechanical skitter away some hundred meters from her position. Though it would have been too fast for an average human to get any clear visual of, she noticed that the scuttling, mite sized beetle-like drone bore a resemblance to Confederate designs. She felt her skin get cold, and that tightening serpent of fear almost made itself known before she swallowed and stilled herself, continuing on when she couldn't see where it had gone.  
  
She'd need to take care of that thing as soon as she caught sight of it again. For her peace of mind if nothing else, even if it was just part of some sick prank.

_Apexia Building_

  
Samus' keen blue eyes were quick to pick out the details of the room offered to her in the mini-apartment provided to her and her fellow podmates. She had dismissed her armour to walk around in her casual outfit, this time deciding to wear a white shirt and a blue coat that hung to a bit above her knees.  
  
The first to catch her eyes was an overly large bed indicated that at least one of the people she'd be staying with would be larger than was standard for humans. The four beds beside her own that were roughly human scale had their own characteristics. One was a bit messy, the affectations next to it showed a great interest in fighting and pride in famous Aelvan freelancers. Another was much neater; its owner was definitely someone who had lived with military standards of cleanliness all their life. Based on the picture of a teenaged blue-haired boy with windswept locks and a wide, goofy grin paired with a V for victory symbol standing next to Adam; she figured him for his brother. The following human-sized bed was for someone she guessed rather quickly was another Aelvan based on the half-finished texts on Aelvan runecraft next to the bed. The next bed was just a maintenance bay for something she immediately figured for a synthetic the size of a child, one who admired Ghor dearly based on her room in the pod having multiple pictures of the cyborg Freelancer at different stages in his life. The last of the beds she guessed belonged to another human, one who had been exposed to some form of empowerment agent, based on the Kanji writing; they were probably either of somewhat Japanese descent or were interested in the history of that now extinct culture.  
  
Six people, with her being the newest addition; and her sharp eyes quickly picking up names based on various personal affectations laid about. The large one was Montauk, a member of the somewhat ape-like Grulndi who had recently joined the Federation. The fighty one was Kreatz, a young Aelvan boy she figured had a chip on his shoulders. The other human would be Ian Ivaschenko Malkovich, a younger brother to Adam born when their parents decided to have a second generation of children once Adam and his siblings grew up. The second Aelvan would be Yramil, another Aelvan girl clearly interested in the arcane arts of her species' famed witchseers. The synth would be the Mechanoid Uldrasi, a learning synthetic who had been touched by Ylla tendrils. Finally, the last of them would be Sekiryu Mizuki, who'd survived an N-Space accident that granted her extraordinary abilities.  
  
Ian at least, didn't take too long to show up, the boy yawning as he walked in through the front entrance and quickly getting the entire group to turn towards him as he blinked a few times. "Hey, Adam I've been trying to find that Pirate drone you spotted, no di-" He stopped the second he looked around and took a second to pinch himself.  
  
Clearly taking a second to process what he was seeing, he almost jolted into action and very nearly stumbled off of his feet before he caught himself with what she recognised as telekinesis and let out a breath of relief. He pushed himself back up and dusted off his slacks and made a loud attempt to clear his throat.  
  
"Oh...hey Adam. You've got some, unusual comp-" Ian said awkwardly as Samus tilted her head at him in interest, her own blue eyes meeting his cyan coloured ones and just about making the psychic's heart stop. His words died in his throat, and Samus got the immediate sensation that his vascular system was busy pumping blood to its lower section while he shifted a bit and harrumphed. Samus' eyes followed where his gaze went and decided to shrug and close up her coat, figuring he was bothered by her wearing it open.  
  
"...Hi!" He said with enthusiasm and a wide grin on his face that she reciprocated and topped off with a wave. She did kind of like the way he was looking at her, he was very pleasing to her eyes, and she spent a bit of thought trying to imagine what he'd look like beneath those layers before making a coy smirk to herself, nodding approvingly.  
  
"Please forgive my brother, should he bother you. He's always had a bit of a chaotic streak when it comes to following regulations." Adam said with a sigh as a pointed glare at Ian got him to blush and adjust his coat to more fully cover his waist for some reason. She didn't quite get it when Arne and some of the Faeran youths had similar reactions to seeing her pretty regularly, but she shrugged it off as another facet of life beyond Zebes she'd need to understand.  
  
"Okay big bro could you try to embarrass me a little less in front of the cute girl you just dropped on top of us? I don't need you killing my vibe the second it begins." He said before giving Samus a wink for reasons that she didn't quite get given that her vision could pick up no irritants in that eye of his. She also didn't quite get what he meant by "vibe" given that he wasn't vibrating anymore than any other living person does.  
  
"Ian, please, decorum." Adam said while the Chozo looked among each other with some concern and confusion. First they turned to Grey Voice who simply shrugged, and when they turned to young War Hawk her narrow, conical beak snapped shut and a whistle Samus knew quite well as meaning "why are you asking me?" shot out from her nose.  
  
"You know that our family has to live up to high standards and that as a psion you have an especially great responsibility t-" Adam said before Ian rolled his eyes and completed his sentence for him.  
  
"Okay, okay I know; big expectations from a military family and even bigger ones when I can read minds, make stuff explode with a thought and throw a tank around. I'm not five years old Adam, let me live!" Ian said with an exasperated groan at the end.  
  
"Ian, what did I tell you about your attitude?" Adam said, folding his arms.  
  
"To keep it under control..." He said with a sigh of defeat.  
  
"You should listen to your brother, Ian. He is quite wise for one as young as he." Grey Voice said sternly and getting a look of mock shock and outrage from Ian.  
  
"Oooh are you calling on Chozo to make your arguments for you now Adam? That is the most...you thing I've ever seen...just...Rylamak help me!" Ian said as he dramatically slumped to a wall in a fashion that got Samus and War Hawk to crack a laugh.  
  
"Ian, stop being dramatic." Adam groaned.  
  
"I have not even begun to get dramatic!" He said with a challenging smirk, shooting a hand into the air as now Old Bird and August Wings began to get in on the laughter.  
  
"Your brother is quite the charming young man, isn't he?" Old Bird said.  
  
"Uh-huh! Super energetic! You must be really confident in yourself huh?" Samus said, grinning and putting her hands on her hips and looking towards Ian, who gave two thumbs up and a coy smile.  
  
"You bet!" He laughed.  
  
"As you are on term break for the moment I'll let your antics slide. But Ian, if you take advantage of Samus' trust, you are going to be hearing from me directly. Am I understood?" Adam said with resignation that got a hard swallow from his younger sibling.  
  
"Yes, Adam." He said as he stood up and offered a salute to his brother, who responded in kind.  
  
"I'll let you get acquainted with your podmates, I'll need to discuss things with the Chozo in private. Dismissed." He said, turning to Samus and giving her a salute that she simply met with a wave goodbye, earning her a smirk from him as the adults walked out of the room.  
  
When the door closed, Ian exhaled like he had been pumped full of air that needed to escape the very next second.  
  
"Torturous I tell you, torturous!" Ian complained as he slid his hands into his jacket pockets and briefly closed his eyes before looking at her. She could feel his attempt at scanning her surface thoughts, but it was trivial to block him out. Not even mother brain herself could so much as make a muscle of hers twitch or push her the barest millimetre, and his power was a far cry from that. It was certainly something that seemed to surprise him as his eyes widened.  
  
"Damn the Chozo blood in you really does make you immune to most esoterics huh?" He said, trying and then failing to make her sleeve lift as she nodded enthusiastically in response.  
  
"Uh-huh. But you've already gotten your power to the point where you can do dynakinetics, telekinesis, and telepathy! I...still haven't learned how to do a lot of that, but I'm hoping to master it soon!" She said with a bounce to her step as she just about hopped closer to him.  
  
"Man I am absolutely not the right person to teach you that." He said, noticing her smile fade into a pout and then starting to sweat slightly. "Buuuut I'd definitely like to learn alongside you, you know?" He said, making a "whew" sound when her smile returned.  
  
"Yay! I'd like that!" She said, scooping him into a hug that made him at first smile before his expression twisted into a grimace as he wheezed in a strained voice.  
  
"Can't feel...legs...breathing...hard...pain overwhelming. Happy to...see you're excited...now please...d-don't kill me." He groaned as Samus made an "oh" sound and backed away, looking down and huffing as she felt a bit bad.  
  
"Sorry." She said quietly.  
  
"It's fine; you just gotta control your strength there warrior queen." He said after letting air back into his lungs with relief.  
  
"I'm not royalty." Samus said with confusion and getting a laugh out of Ian as he shook his head.  
  
"Oh I am going to have to teach you every expression in existence, aren't I?" He chuckled, putting his hands on his hips and sizing Samus up, slightly intimidated that he had a minimal height advantage at best but offering his best smile anyway.  
  
"I learned a lot with Arne." She said, getting a quizzical expression from him as he met her with his own head tilt.  
  
"Who's Arne?" He asked.  
  
"Oh, he's a really sweet guy. Arne Eriksen Skjoldr. I'd love for you to meet him someday Ian. Maybe you'll love him as I do?" She said as if she were talking about the weather as Ian seemed to pause his thought process and consider these revelations.  
  
"Skjoldr...as in...ODOCR omnipragmatist terrorist Skjoldr? Aren't they dead?" He said with concern.  
  
"...His parents weren't terrorists!" She said with outrage, her brows furrowing and a surprised gasp coming from her. He gulped a bit before shaking his head and sighing before offering his hand out.  
  
"Okay. Let's start that over again. I'm Ian. Nice to meet you." He said as Samus tried to grip his hand lightly and shake it with all the delicacy she could manage.  
  
"Samus." She said with a grin before the door swung open again to reveal an orange-haired Aelvan girl who came up to about Samus' height if somewhat less muscular, her long locks pooling to about the midsection of her back and her bangs partly covering one eye. Runic tattoos in the vague shape of Leonid beasts decorated her cheeks, and yellow eyes stared out at the world as the vanilla skinned Aelvan slouched forward. She looked between the two and squinted her eyes, blazer covered shoulders sinking slightly.  
  
She took a second to study Samus, putting her chin between her thumb and forefinger and nodded approvingly. "Looking gorgeous there, blondie." Yramil said with a thumbs up that Samus returned without hesitation.  
  
"You haven't already tried to sleep with her right?" Yramil said, putting her hands on her waist as Samus looked at the pointed eared girl with fascination. So pretty. She must have looked incredible in motion, Samus thought, wondering what it might be like to feel those lips of hers. Spirits, so many pretty people here, the blonde concluded in her mind.  
  
Ian almost reacted as if he was backed into a corner as he raised his hands up in protest and cleared his throat. Whether he was being genuine with his response or was playing it up for drama was unknown to her, but she did find it funny.  
  
"Hey give me a little credit here! Besides my older brother was here too Yra." He said affectionately as the Aelvan rolled her eyes and snorted at the diminutive.  
  
"Oh, not to interrupt Ian, but you said you saw a Space Pirate drone...right?" Samus asked.  
  
"Oh...you've seen it too?" Ian said, clearing his throat in an effort to pull this conversation into any direction but the one it was in.

"Yeah, it was scuttling away from me in the lobby." She said, tapping her chin and then looking towards him. Her expression became much more stern with almost breathtaking speed. The conversation topic hardened her heart and her voice became almost cold.  
  
"Do you think it's actually...Space Pirate tech? I...kind of hope it is so I can smash it." She said, doing her best to hide the slight quake in her voice every time she mentioned them. She wasn't sure if she could even mention that grotesque polity by its formal name without seeing red.  
  
"Honestly? I doubt it, the Confederacy sending probes all the way out here? They'd have tried to blow something up if they could sneak a drone that big." Yramil said somewhat dismissively, shaking her head and folding her arms.  
  
"It's probably just some asshole's idea of a prank. The older students here love their stupid jokes." She said with a resigned sigh before brushing some hair out of her face.  
  
"Think it might be Gandrayda?" Ian asked, Samus quizically raising a brow and pursing her lips at the name.  
  
"Who's Gandrayda?" Samus asked.  
  
"One of the single-digits here. Or maybe she's older than that; I can't tell her age. Shapeshifter, addicted to stupid jokes. Also can shock you." Yramil said with a sigh as she looked over at Samus again and did a twice over as if she just needed a refresher of Samus' body to perk her back up.  
  
"Oh, so like a Jovian?" Samus said, her eyes gleaming with understanding.  
  
"I don't think she's quite one but sure if that helps." Ian shrugged as he sighed and slouched a bit backwards, leaning against the wall and folding his arms before putting on some sunglasses. A gesture that Samus found absolutely baffling given that he was indoors, though Yramil seemed to find it funny as she snorted and rolled her eyes.  
  
"Ian, you're a dork." Yramil scoffed.  
  
"Hey, you're just jealous because you can't look half as good as I do trying this out." Ian said with a smug smirk that got him a pronounced "tch" from Yramil before she opened the door for the trio.  
  
"Well if you aren't busy being too awesome for us mere mortals, I'd like to show Samus to breakfast with the crew." She said, gesturing to the open door in a way Samus recognised as an invitation for her to step through first, staying between the two of them as they crossed the hall.  
  
The trip down to the breakfast hall was relatively uneventful, though Samus couldn't help but stare and analyse every little thing and person she saw. It was all so very fresh to her; the odd shapes, the milieu of people, the bustle of surface-level thoughts and emotions, the chatter of conversations and the menagerie of activities. All of it endlessly fascinating to a girl who had never before seen so many people she could call peers. Oohs and aahs came from her, and she had to hold her tongue to stop herself from blurting every little bit of trivia she recognised.  
  
Once though she couldn't help herself as she stopped and pointed to an alien with a short but wide torso atop long digitigrade legs bearing equally lengthy arms. His frosty blue and grey exterior smooth as ice, and his head encased in a seemingly featureless insectile helmet for the long and almost submarine shaped appendage. The air felt a little colder in his presence, and Samus immediately recognised him for what he was.  
  
"Rundas!" She said, pointing out the famed Phrygisian freelancer as he chatted up some alumni to catch up with old friends. The hunter's sharp hearing got him to turn his head towards her and give her a nod. She had read so many of his adventure logs, admired the way he held his cool in the face of danger, and adored the way he had helped so many with the utmost confidence. Her wide eyed expression bore a huge grin as she clasped her hands together.  
  
"Got a new friend there, Ian? Seems like she's got some good taste." He said with a relaxed, easy tone to his voice like there was nothing to worry about in the universe.  
  
"Oh, this is Samus Aran. Yeah, daughter of those Arans. Guess the Chozo did save someone from there after all. Wild right?" Ian said, gesturing towards her and nodding, giving Samus a slight push forward as she nodded and tried to contain her giddiness.  
  
"Damn, for real, you're Rodney and Virginia's kid? The girl who saved that brigade on the progenitor world?" Rundas said, only briefly losing his composure as he seemed genuinely shocked at the word. His four eyes beneath his helm studied her closely, mandibles twitching as he contemplated her. He was more than two and a half times her height, and had to lean down to look at her eye to eye.  
  
"Yeah! I've read all about people like you and Ghor; all the stories Spire and Armaud told about you; all the logs you've written." She said, flushing rose in her cheeks before brushing some hair away from her face. "You're so brave and inspiring! I'm hoping I can be like that someday." She smiled sweetly at him as Rundas chuckled and nodded at her.  
  
"Kid, I've seen the footage of what you did on Zoran. You're basically already most of the way there." He said reassuringly, his voice almost unexpectedly gentle as Samus felt warm on the inside despite the chill of being close to so mighty a cryokine.  
  
"Besides, if you're good enough to have Armaud of all people singing your praises you've gotten farther than most already. Definitely hoping to see what you can do soon." He said, starting to stand up and crack his neck briefly.  
  
"Oh thank you! It means a lot to hear that from you." She beamed at him, rocking a bit back and forth on her feet as she thought of something to say.  
  
"Rundas?" She asked.  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"Have you seen a small drone, mite sized? Looks...space pirate made?" She asked.  
  
"Yeah, I've seen it around a few places. Must be more than one of them. Not a big fan of this kind of joke though so I'm hoping to find out." He said, a nod of understanding coming from Samus while he shook his head in disappointment. The kind of things some people find funny, he muttered beneath his breath though she could hear him just fine.  
  
"Tell you what, when you finish breakfast with your friends we could look into it together?" He offered, and Samus jumped off of her feet and just about tackled him to the ground with a hug and an excited noise like a shrieking eagle. He crumpled beneath the unexpected force of her movements and grunted before laughing a bit.  
  
"Wow okay, didn't expect you to pack that much of a punch there." He said easily.  
  
"I'd love that! Ian, Yramil, you want to join in too?" She asked, turning excitedly towards the other two who looked between each other and nodded.  
  
"Ahhh! This is going to be fun! An adventure already!" She just about clapped her hands as she stood up, noticing a few pointed looks in her direction and hearing a few mumblings about how weird she was. She tried to ignore them though, she was over the moon right now and wouldn't let anyone or anything drag her down.  
  
"Anyway, we should probably head out. I don't want to lose out on my favourite spot." Ian said, adjusting his shades and putting a hand down his coat pocket.  
  
"Oh right...food, what do you guys have?" She asked, backflipping off of Rundas and cracking her neck after landing perfectly amidst them. She made it look so easy and effortless, but of course, a movement like this was nothing to her. No harder than lifting a finger would be to an average human. She barely even noticed it as a matter of fact even if Yramil offered a round of applause like she had just stuck the landing at a sporting event.  
  
"I mean, basically anything you want." Yramil said as she adjusted her own jacket while waving goodbye to Rundas who gave the three a thumbs up.  
  
"Catch you kids later. Take care of them will ya Yra?" Rundas said with a gentle smirk of his mandibles beneath his helmet.  
  
"'Course I will. I've got this babysitting thing down." She said, folding her arms and smirking smugly while Ian rolled his eyes.  
  
"Also, Ian, one more thing." Rundas said, getting him to turn his head towards him.  
  
"Sunglasses indoors? Makes you look like a dweeb." He said before Ian extended the middle digit of his right hand at Rundas and immediately got raucous laughter out of the Freelancer. The three walked away while Yramil tugged on Ian's collar, getting a yelp out of him as she demanded that he follow behind her.  
  
"What does that gesture mean?" Samus asked, curiosity sparked.  
  
"It means fuck you." Yramil said casually while Ian pulled a flask out of his pocket and started to sip a fruity blue carbonated drink while they approached the mess hall.  
  
"Oh maybe later. You are both quite pretty, and I like your company, but Ian seems to be too young to do that with Rundas. Not to mention that the cold would be unpleasant inside of his body." That statement made Ian start to choke on his drink almost immediately while Yramil covered her mouth and doubled over like she was punched in the gut. A long, protracted wheeze came out of Yramil while Ian started hacking out the blue liquid of his soda with wet, desperate coughs.  
  
"Are you okay?" She asked as another Aelva approached, roughly and boyishly cut black hair framing a youthful, spunky looking face that Samus would have called cute before anything else.  
  
He wore a collared blue and white shirt paired with some athletic looking trousers and walked on comfortable looking shoes while his bright green eyes stared out at the three and looked with concern at Ian's coughing fit. He patted him on the back and made a face before looking at Samus and soon dropping his jaw before Yramil closed it and chastised him about looking like an idiot.  
  
"Ohhhh, you must be Kreatz!" Samus asked while he continued to pat at Ian to help him expel all the fluid inside of his throat.  
  
She thought that he must have had some fascinating, beautiful musculature beneath all those clothes; she wondered if he ever took to exercising shirtless. She almost said as much before her distant sight told her that such would be a rather...awkward question to ask the relatively short elfin boy.  
  
"Yeah, that's me alright. So what'd you say to get Ian to spit out his lydleberry soda anyway?" He said before getting a self-cleaning cloth out of his pocket and wiping off Ian's face and then clearing his throat, hands going behind his back to stand at attention.  
  
"Oh, Yramil said "fuck you" while explaining a gesture with the middle digit, and I expressed interest in the offer. Would you like to join?" Samus said casually.  
  
Kreatz' whole body flushed red before he started wiping sweat away from his forehead and made a loud harrumph as he averted his gaze. Yramil sniggered joyously and started to laugh outright while Samus was left feeling quite unsure of what was supposed to be funny. Ian looked like he was going to combust as he shakily rescrewed his cap telekinetically.  
  
"O-o-ok-okay...gonna have to work on your idioms because wow that was terrible. I am...holy shit." He said with quivering lips before trying to turn away and redirect their attention literally anywhere else.  
  
"Well uh, Ian I kind of uh...got more footage of that drone problem you've got...so if you'd like to talk about things that won't make me die of being flustered let's, do that please?" He said quickly and desperately, his body almost shaking with his eagerness to turn towards a task that wouldn't make him cringe his way into twisting his skeleton into a pretzel.  
  
"Y-yeah that sounds. That sounds good. Let's do that. You saved my table right, Kreatz? I'm going to kick your ass if you didn't save my table." Ian said, pounding his chest to get the last of the cough droplets out of his mouth before Kreatz thumbed over to the room just behind the nearest visible door.  
  
"You couldn't do that if you had a century to prepare Ian." Kreatz said with smug confidence.  
  
Samus paused as she considered what he said for a bit, stepping around to look at Kreatz's posterior and getting a confused stare out of the Aelvan. She then looked back at Ian and sized up his leg before snapping her attention back to the bewildered Kreatz.  
  
"Are you sure about that boast? It doesn't look like you've got a lot of advantages in a fight with him." She asked, getting a sputtering laugh out of Kreatz and a snort out of the other two.  
  
"You haven't seen how I fight Samus." The elfin boy smirked.

"Oh, I'm sure you'll be able to impress me if you try," Samus said with an approving nod, getting a smug scoff and smirk from Kreatz.

"Oh please, I know I'd be able to impress you! Chozo training or not, I've got skills like nobody else." Kreatz said, thumbing over to himself and just about brimming with self-confidence that got a laugh out of the young girl. A laugh that only intensified when Yramil grabbed him by his ear lobe and started to pull him back.

"Kreatz come on, stop trying to show off in front of the new girl." She said as Kreatz shouted off a rapid series of "Ow"s that a quick scan by Samus' keen eyes let her know were being exaggerated for dramatic effect while Ian snickered under his breath.

"Okay, okay, I give!" Kreatz said before he was let go, rubbing at his lobe and twitching his pointed ears slightly before flicking his gaze over to Samus once more and clearing out his throat.

"But yeah, if you want to spar with me; I'm game," Kreatz said before he gestured towards their table. "But first, let's get something to eat, I'm starving." He said, though as far as Samus could tell, he was perfectly healthy.

The seats looked surprisingly comfortable, and folding sections quickly unfurled to provide Samus with back support as she got comfy and swivelled slightly in the chair. The barely audible clicks of folding machinery like a bit of music to her ears as she relaxed a bit.

Samus' eyes drew themselves towards a holographic menu as she trusted her distant sight to tell her what she might like to eat. It didn't take her long to settle on a dish similar to what her dad would often make, potatoes, some flash grown white meat, lentils, seasoned with a bit of saffron and pepper, with green leaf mixed in. She set the specifications to just what she liked and nodded with satisfaction with it confirmed the order.

It was only when she noticed the large, bulky form of Montauk sitting down next to Yramil at the farthest end of the table from her that she realised she'd let herself fall behind on the conversation. One that picked up as Uldrasi hopped onto her seat, her visor-like blue optics zooming in while her four arms tapped themselves together with a plan forming in her head. But it would have to bear one more interruption as Mizuki dropped from above and hovered into their seat, unfurling the helmet of their white, blue, and silver flight suit to reveal their slender but androgynous features though Samus had a hunch that the platinum-haired beauty had something of a leaning towards feminity. As they curled up the planar wings of their suit, they flipped their shoulder-length hair back, pushing it away from half of their face to show that both of their eyes were the colour of brick. And it would seem that her hunch that they were of Asian descent was correct, something that gave Samus quite a lot of satisfaction.

She was able to piece together what they were talking about at least with a quick readjustment, listening in on what they spoke about and letting her intuition figure the rest out from the context.

"I've got that data you asked for." Uldrasi's squeaky voice said as she projected a few images from her spindly, child-sized chassis' arms, vocoders humming slightly as she thought out loud.

"Sweet, mind if I have a look?" Ian asked as she passed one of the holograms towards him, a burger already in his hands. He looked over the information with what Samus recognised were augmented reality scanners in his sunglasses before he nodded and took a bite out of his food, chewing briskly to save on time.

"You guys still obsessing over the drones?" Montauk said, a rumbly baritone almost at odds with his presence next to the rest of the group.

"It's only the greatest mystery we can directly poke at. Don't be a killjoy Montauk." Mizuki said with a snort.

"It's called having a healthy sense of doubt regarding whether this whole thing's worth our time. We've got plenty of stuff to worry about already without chasing after the first shiny thing." Montauk said with a plaintive groan.

"Obsessing? Come on, tracking down whose dumb idea these were could help us get ahead in class. Just think about what they'd say when we unravel this whole dumb prank." Ian said, leaning a bit back in his chair and scoffing with folded arms; telekinetics holding his sandwich in the air without any spillage while he gave a flirtatious wink to Mizuki who snorted in response.

"Have you actually gotten more than the first three paragraphs of that report done though? Just asking." Montauk said with a rather distinctly unimpressed looking gaze from his simian features.

"Knowing Ian he's probably still operating under the "I do my best work under pressure" philosophy," Uldrasi said with a high pitched snicker at the end that got a snort out of Yramil, a Cheshire grin from Mizuki, and a smirk from Kreatz while Ian scowled.

"Last-minute Ian not crunch himself as hard as possible? You must have him confused with some other blue-haired kid. Couldn't be this one." Mizuki said with a mirthful but not at all meanspirited laugh, though Samus didn't feel it was quite right to partake in it herself.

"Hey, if it works it works." Montauk said with a shrug before he finally seemed to notice Samus and let out a sound best described as a surprised mixture between "huh" and "oof." "Oh, didn't see you there you're...wow that's what you look like beneath the armour? When I heard you saved an entire mechanised brigade I was expecting something more...like..." He said, looking over to Uldrasi who also turned her attention towards the young hatchling and gave a nod.

"Personally I was expecting...a beak or feathers when I heard you had Chozo DNA spliced into you, Samus." Mizuki said as they stared a bit closer at Samus and thumbed their chin before pulling back.

"Oh no, I'm entirely organic. Just...very enhanced is all. I'm surprised that you've already heard about that. That wasn't very long ago, honestly." She said, a flush to her cheeks as she bashfully accepted the offering of food given to her by a hovering machine.

"And well, the DNA splicing was done very carefully to make sure I still looked completely human. I can even have um...babies normally." Samus flushed a bit, though of course the Chozo would never countenance making her sterile. If she wished to restart the Aran lineage once again, that was always to be her choice. Though such was definitely far in the future for her. Far too much to do until she could settle down as much as the idea appealed to her.

"Oh really?" Ian said with a bold and daring grin before Kreatz palmed his face and groaned about Ian being horny again, though Samus took a look at him and could find no presence of horns or antlers or any similar structures protruding from his head.

"Oh come on Kreatz, you're supposed to back me up." Ian said with an exaggerated sigh as he pulled himself up straighter and took a bite out of his meal, washing it down with more of his drink.

"Hey, I'm sure given time she'll find you as charming as the rest of us do." Mizuki said reassuringly.

"I already find him charming!" Samus said out loud, quirked brows raising before she added. "You're all really charming and interesting! It's so intriguing to just hear you all talk!" Samus clapped her hands with glee before turning towards her food and stabbing her fork into the first piece of artificial meat.

"We're interesting?" Yramil asked, giving an enticing look of coy curiosity. "Sammy, have you seen yourself lately?" She said with a bit of a sweet singsong at the end of her tone.

"Well, I think you're interesting! But I guess yeah, I did a lot of stuff too." Samus said with an attempt at humbleness.

She ate at a careful rate, trying to savour the food rather than just shovel it all in, never eating while she was talking. All a bit formal, even to Yramil's eyes as she loudly slurped up some liquified ice cream derivative drink.

"I mean, you saved an entire sector from being destroyed. And you're related to the people who killed Ridley." Uldrasi said before Samus' smile faded all at once as her breath started to get shallow and quickly drawn in. She let out an unpleasant wheezing sound at the mention of his name, her fingernails starting to press into her palms while her heartbeat intensified until she was aware of every little contraction.

She felt the fire and the flames once again, and that awful roar rang in her ears. She shook her head and grimaced before she swallowed and turned towards her drink and gulped it down hurriedly. The sweet flavour and the cool sensation drew her mind away from the terrible thought, and her breath started to relax and slow. She had almost had a panic attack in front of her new friends, and felt briefly ashamed of her weakness. Unbecoming of her, she thought as she was aware that all five of them were staring at her sympathetically.

"Uldra, maybe we could not mention his name? Just a little thought." Yramil said with an unhappy glare at her mechanical companion who looked away with shame clinging heavily to her.

"Hey, Samus. It's okay; you're safe here." Ian said, hesitantly reaching a hand towards her, ready to pull back at the first sign of her not wanting him to approach, but getting a nod of her assent and resting it on her. He gave a sympathetic smile, lowering his sunglasses at her and smirking before she pulled him into another hug that made him wheeze before telekinetically bracing himself.

"Gonna have to work a bit more on that strength control with people who can't bench press starships, Samus." Mizuki said with raised eyebrows.

"Okay...readied myself for that one...still, ow..." He grimaced before she let go and smirked at him.

"See, we can all be adorable together!" Yramil laughed.

"Adorabloodthirsty." Kreatz insisted, folding his arms together and giving a proud look.

"So...to get back on topic..." Uldrasi said, clearly desperate to regain some shred of honour after her faux pas.

"Yeah, Uldra and I have narrowed down some candidates for who could be making stuff like this." Kreatz said after clearing his throat and folding his hands together. He looked towards her and gave an expectant glance for her to explain some of the more technical details, dark blue eyes focused intently on her as she made an electronic harrumph.

"Okay eliminating everyone who doesn't have any known ability to make robotics and doesn't have the resources to make something like this I cut the list down to about a thousand people. Then I cut out the people who'd probably find something like this tasteless and the people who wouldn't have the free time." She said, showing a picture set of the student body and faculty and then rapidly eliminating portraits that didn't fit her criteria. Though Samus looked at the image with more than a bit of concern at the fact that she could just...get all this information without asking, was it publicly available?

"And I cut out the people who wouldn't have had any known opportunities since we started seeing the drones about fifteen days ago. So that leaves us with six people to the best of my ability." She said, showing six images that Samus took only a moment to look over. None of these faces were human, not even a little. But her eyes could make out all the distinct features all the same.

One was a frilled metallic life form by the name of Duskroz, a robotic whiz kid who had quickly grown famous for her work with machines at an early age. But Samus eliminated her from the running in her mind, her intuition told her it was the wrong answer, and her brief analysis of her profile told her this couldn't be the one. Too focused on her work to distract herself with a dumb prank.

Lagrim, an electrical energy based being at first seemed like a good suspect. They were mischievous, irreverent, playful and had to have a few reprimands due to their habit of getting a bit meanspirited. But they also liked to leave calling cards due to wanting recognition for their jokes. So no, couldn't be them either.

Grilari, a floral plant-based life form was dismissed out of hand by Samus as she saw that like herself; he was very unfond of the Space Pirates and would never stoop to trying to make use of their image for a joke.

But the remaining three, Skord, Kyramph, and Eleok seemed more promising to her. Skord, an insectoid who had been down on his luck until he suddenly was able to spend a lot more money than he usually could seemed suspicious to be sure. Kyramph, an annelidish silicoid had recently started acting somewhat erratic and had an unusual shift in some personality traits towards being far more reclusive than usual. And finally Eleok, a reptilian sulphur breather, had started to sneak off frequently from her usual friend groups at reasonably regular intervals. Of course, this was assuming that the commentary posted on their profiles by other students and faculty was accurate.

Samus flicked a finger towards her three subjects of choice. "I'd think it would be these three? But I'd really prefer to get to know them before making any serious accusations. It'd be awful if he blamed someone innocent." Samus said, taking a glance between the rest of her group and starting to form a theory in her head only to dismiss it later. She needed more facts before she could commit to a hypothesis, being rash in her decision making could get someone hurt. Yet the narrative building in her head was a powerful one. She could feel it clinging to her mindscape as if it was trying to resist her urge to dismiss it for now.

"Huh, that seems to be actually pretty reasonable." Yramil said as she looked over the information for herself. She paused, rubbed at her chin between her thumb and forefinger and then looked towards Samus and nodded at her. The runes on her cheeks briefly glowed as she made a few incantations that Samus recognised as Aelvan witchcraft, an ooh and an ah issuing from the young woman's lips as Yramil let a few threads of energy slip from her free hand.

Ian, clearly not one to let himself be outdone; harrumphed and concentrated. Samus could feel the psychic energy radiating from his mind and wriggled her fingers at the electric sensation of his mental probing. While Yramil was weaving a cable of esoteric energy, Ian was sending out something more like a sonar pulse. Both were equally fascinating to the blonde who hungered to know both forces one day, and she soon formed a grin on her face as she clasped her hands together.

"Wow, mind saving some of Samus' attention for the rest of us?" Kreatz said with a hearty laugh while Montauk and Udrasil simply gave their best shrug.

"Oh, are you two competing for my attention? It doesn't have to be a contest, you're both being very helpful." Samus said with a clap and a wide grin.

"If it were a contest I'd clearly be the winner anyway." Mizuki said, gesturing to themselves proudly.

"Yeah but I've been able to find a good way to get in touch with them without tipping them off." Ian said with a smug smirk and a fold of his arms while Yramil rolled her eyes.

"Meanwhile I managed to find where they're likely to get going later today." Yramil said with her own coy look until Montauk let out an exhalation.

"Maybe we should just inform some of the staff without invading people's privacy?" He said, clearly unimpressed by the light show going on.

"He's right." Samus said, running a hand through her hair after having thought about it. She couldn't stomach the idea of just barging in with these sorts of accusations accrued through these methods, even if they might be allowable. She placed a hand on her cheek and straightened herself up as the others looked towards her expectantly, waiting for her justification.

"We can't just barge into people's personal information like this without a good reason. But what we can do instead, is catch one of the drones and see where that leads us." She continued, feeling a sense of relief at getting her feelings off her chest. She did want to catch them of course but she would feel so very much better with herself if they did it in a more fair way.

"What? This way goes a lot faster. Besides, I'm sure they'll own up to it when confronted." Uldrasi said with a pronounced shrug of her four arms before she folded them together.

"And do you have any proof besides a guess based on their profiles?" Samus asked pointedly, raising a brow and rapping her fingers against the table.

"It's at least a lead, come on. Be reasonable." Kreatz said with a groan.

"No, it's a guess based on circumstance. Let's do this right." Samus said, folding her arms in return and huffing.

"Gonna have to agree with her there. Let's not chase random hunches." Yramil said after finishing off a spoonful of her gelatinous dessert. "Besides we'd look like assholes if we went after one and were wrong anyway." She added before her hand found its way to a cup and downed some blue liquid in a hurry.

"So that means it's up to you Ian. What's your take coolkid?" Kreatz said, putting his chin in his hand and staring down the younger Malkovich as he pursed his lips and had a brief moment to think.

He didn't take too long of course, Ian always prided himself on his ability to think quickly, and he snapped his fingers promptly as he thought of his answers. An audible "Eureka!" being heard escaping his lips as he had his lightbulb moment.

"Want me to make a ding?" Mizuki said before Ian muttered "shut up" beneath his breath.

"I'm going to agree with Samus here. Let's do this right." He said, lowering his sunglasses and offering a wink to Samus that she identified as flirtatious based entirely off of the empathic signals he was radiating out.

She didn't mind it, though she wished he'd just be more open with his infatuation like Arne or the Faeran youths were. It was strange not knowing whether or not it was acceptable to reciprocate. Such things felt so much easier back home, yet everyone's reactions to her stating her feelings out loud were so strange. Had she made a mistake?

She shook her head, no she'd done just fine. She'd be up to the challenge no matter what it was.

"So...when can we get started?" She said, perking up before Montauk let out a small whistle and chewed his lip.

"Well, first we're going to have to get you settled in before any of that. Orientations and everything you know?" He said, getting a nod of understanding out of the heiress of the Chozo. What he was saying did make sense, if she was going to be sticking around here she might as well get used to how things worked around here.

"When will be able to get started on that?" She asked.

"Soon as we finish eating." Yramil said, kicking back slightly in her chair and humming mostly to herself as she finished off the last of the food put in front of her. For someone of her figure, she was quite adept at making large meals disappear in a hurry, though Samus figured that Yramil probably required a lot of energy for the work she was clearly doing with her body.

"Yeah I've been waiting for a food break for ages." Mizuki added as they gulped down another mouthful of rice and fish.

"Oh, so we can't hurry up with eating then! I'd really like to go out and see around!" Samus said with a wide grin before she paused at the sound of Yramil laughing like a hyena. Samus tilted her head and scrunched her face, feeling slightly embarrassed as she was left unable to figure out what she said that was so funny.

"Oh make these guys hurry up with their food? Oh you'd have an easier time punching a black hole to death." Yramil said, barely containing her laughter as she lurched a bit forward with her giggling until Samus found herself sharing a laugh with her. And with laughter being the ever infectious thing it always is, it soon passed around until all six of them were busily guffawing.

Well, at least she was well on her way to making friends.

* * *

**Samus' Logbook entries**

Individuals: Human-Chozo Hybrid: Female: Federation Born: Independent: Alive: Samus Eabha Aran (Part 3)

Samus Eabha Aran attracted substantial attention in Federation Circles by saving an entire mechanised brigade stranded on the Progenitor deathworld of Zoran and stopping unknown entities from detonating a catastrophic dimensional rift device with enough power to destroy an entire sector. Not only was the daughter of the slayers of Ridley confirmed to be still alive, but the Chozo had granted her their gifts and knowledge. She had grown into an incredibly potent fighter far beyond what most Lancers could hope to achieve even at an extremely young age. Interest in her only further deepened following her transfer to the Prodigal Program at the behest of the Chozo. The Chozo had believed that she had learned more than enough about physical combat and conventional education to instead focus on socialisation. So far, she has remained unavailable for comment to Federal News agencies.

 _Samus' Notes:_

Spirits I don't think I'm ready to be a celebrity. This is all kind of...far too much attention for someone like me to handle. I think I'll try to keep a bit out of the limelight for now.

Organisations: Academic: Federal Established: Supranormal: Prodigal Program

The Prodigal Program serves as a system of providing education to the supranormally gifted with abilities well outside of the norm of their species. Established by decree of the Federal Commission with the assent of the Chozo in the cosmic year 2006, the Prodigal Program is regarded as one of the most broadly successful extranormal educational programs within the space of the Galactic Federation. While the program has had its critics due to its focus on practical education and getting pupils to integrate well with Federation society; it has been praised for its ability to consistently turn out some of the most valued members of Federal society. Courses are offered to all ages, but its programs covering the youth years are typically the most well known. Courses cover not only supranormal subjects but also conventional educational courses, though these can be modified depending on the pupil's needs. The program has campuses spread across the whole of the billions of light-years of Federation space, and the establishment of new campuses is usually one of the first signs that a system has been fully integrated into the Galactic Federation.

 _Samus' Notes:_

Well, so far everything seems nice. I'm hoping that I'll get to do well here. So many interesting and pretty people too. Ah. I just can't wait to make as many friends as possible!

Technologies: Computer: Synthetic Consciousness: Biomechanical: Federation: Aurora Unit

The Federation's Aurora Units serve as the core of its bureaucracy and civil service, handling tasks that would have once required thousands of lesser A.Is with a single centralised unit. A seamless intermeshing of mechanical computing technology with organically grown artificial brains, Aurora units combine the best of both biological and technological thought processing. Thanks to their psychic abilities, Aurora Units are also naturally adept at interacting with organic life forms and can easily read the moods and desires of those they work with. Furthermore, their ability to monitor thought has made it far easier for Federal Law Enforcement to deal with infiltrators and would-be criminals. As time goes on, the Aurora Units have increasingly been integrated with every facet of Federal society, forming the Federation's famous aurora network across its territories spread throughout the known universe.

 _Samus' Notes:_

I don't think I like the idea of them being free to read people's minds unless they're trying to be polite. I'm also uncomfortable with the fact that they're designed with mind-control capabilities. But it's nice to see the Federation making progress towards S.Cs on the level of Mother Brain, even if it's prolonged.

Individuals: Human: Male: Federation: Military: Army: Officer Corps: Alive: Adam Ivaschenko Malkovich

Adam Ivaschenko Malkovich is the latest General to be produced from a long line of Malkovich military officials in the family's deep connections to the Federal Armed forces. Adam refused to make usage of any patronage networks, however and requested deployment far away from his family's usual areas to avoid being advantaged by knowing the right people. While this has somewhat stymied his career and leaves him short on friends, it has given him an impeccable reputation for incorruptibility and fairness. Well known for his sense of honour and his tactical aptitude, Adam feels most at home in field command and has little interest in being promoted beyond a grade where he can be expected to find himself in battle. Adam was also close friends with both Rodney and Virginia Aran during their tours of service in the Federation Naval Marine corps, considering them his unofficial liaisons to the Navy.

 _Samus' Notes:_

He's an honourable man and I'm hoping that he can tell me more about what my parents were like while he knew them. I wonder what his home's like?

Individuals: Human: Male: Psionic: Federation: Civilian: Prodigal Program: Alive: Ian Ivashchenko Malkovich

One of Adam Malkovich's younger siblings born more than a generation after him when their parents decided to have a new set of children, Ian was soon found to be a powerful psychic. As is expected for Federation born psions, Ian was transferred to the a supranormal educational program for his education at an early age in which he has remained. Though he was initially a model student seeking to follow in his older brother's footsteps, teenaged rebellion has driven him towards being an incorrigible flirt obsessed with his image as a suave and handsome playboy. Though he remains a high performing student, many have criticised him for his seeming inability to take things seriously and tendency to spend more time trying to catch eyes than studying.

 _Samus' Notes:_

He's really handsome and incredibly cute and I really like the energy he has. I'm just not sure if wearing sunglasses indoors or at night is very practical. It looks nice on him though.

Individuals: Aelvan: Female: Mage: Federation: Civilian: Prodigal Program: Alive: Yramil Arthynielle Sylmarith

Yramil is the descendant of famed Aelvan Witchseers and well regarded for her exceptionally quick ability to learn both Aelvan runecraft as well as the sorcerous habits of other cultures. Particularly interested in the legacy of the progenitors such as the Faera, Yramil has spent substantial portions of her young life in trying to make progress on deciphering Faeran runic text. She hopes to one day meet one of the honoured ancients herself and learn their magic from them directly. Noted to be somewhat sarcastic but always playful, Yramil is well regarded by most people who meet her and has come to be one of the most famous pupils of her age bracket at the Prodigal Program's headquarters campus.

 _Samus' Notes:_

She's so pretty and interesting! I'd love to get to know everything I can about her. I'm really glad that she's my pod mate, she must have so many interesting things to talk about!

Individuals: Aelvan: Male: Mage: Federation: Civilian: Prodigal Program: Alive: Ilkreatzan "Kreatz" Thelndraen Elemon

Kreatz is a young mage of a tradition that emphasises the usage of sorcerous ability for enhancing close combat prowess. As such, he is quite pleased with his physical might and ability, making expert use of his arcanolumor weapons in sparring and practice drills. While he does not have much in the way of famous family history, Kreatz seeks to defy many preconceptions of the Aelva as a dainty or nonphysical species. Many consider him to be brash, aggressive, bellicose and often even foolhardy. However, these traits belie Kreatz's cunning and quick thinking, which more than make up for his tendency to be somewhat lacklustre and planning ahead. Kreatz is also well known for how much he hates being reminded that he is rather short for an Aelva.

 _Samus' Notes:_

Honestly, I think he's adorable. However, I get the feeling that he'd kick me if I called him that.

Individuals: Synthetics: Feminine Presenting: Techmaster: Federation: Civilian: Uldrasi

Uldrasi was created as a "growing machine" able to develop alongside children to provide them with a companion who could help organics be more acclimatised to synthetic life forms. At an early point in their development however, Uldrasi was touched by an Ylla mission. The process infused her with portions of their technology and ability and made her something far beyond conventional norms for her model of machines. From there, she would apply to and join the prodigal program where she hopes to learn to best use her gifts from the Ylla to become a worthy enough heir to their legacy. Uldrasi is often impatient, seeking to rush from one project to the next, but always observant; keeping tabs on all things going on around her. She's regarded as somewhat impish and mischievous but ultimately a great addition to have to the program.

 _Samus' Notes:_

Hrm, I've got my doubts regarding her lack of care for privacy. But she is a fellow progenitor-touched. So I should try to be friends as best as I can. I hope I didn't make a bad first impression.

Individuals: Grulndi: Male: Aberrant: Federation: Civilian: Prodigal Program: Alive: Montauk Ungrumok Gurlok

Montauk is an Aberrant of the Grulndi species born with exceptionally heightened strength, regeneration, and durability even by the standards of his species that can increase with the extremes of his emotional state. Though ordinarily a very placid and calm individual, Montauk has a finely honed sense of outrage at injustices and abuses and rarely hesitates to get into fights against perceived bullies if peaceful methods fail. However Montauk also emphasises the need to seek peaceful solutions before resorting to force when all other paths have been exhausted. His sense of fairness is also impeccable, always seeking to do right by those who do right by him, and to avoid antagonising people unless absolutely needed. He is, despite the often savage stereotypes associated with the Grulndi species, also a soft-hearted intellectual who enjoys fine arts and literary craft.

 _Samus' Notes:_

He seems like a big sweetheart! Someone I can hug without worrying if I'm going to break their spine too. And his taste in books is incredible! Hoping he can recommend me some really nice stuff soon!

Individuals: Human: Nonbinary: Empowered: Federation: Civilian: Prodigal Program: Alive: Sekiryu Mizuki

Sekiryu Mizuki was exposed to the energies of an accident in N-space at an early age, causing numerous physiological alterations in the process. In addition to the typical array of enhanced physical attributes, Mizuki is able to alter their own personal timeflow to move and act at speeds surpassing even what their augmented physiology should be capable of. Also able to project their temporal distortions outwards, they areconsidered an extremely tricky opponent to deal with as well as a subject of substantial curiosity to many suprasophont specialists given the relative rarity of suprasophonts who are able to manipulate time. Considered a daredevil and a risktaker, Mizuki is supremely confident in their abilities and takes a great deal of pride in their capacity to handle nearly any situation. They are also noted for their fondness of studying pre-space faring Earth history.

Samus' Notes:

Aahhh so many very interesting people for me to get to know! Mizuki seems like they've got some interesting perspectives on time, and I'm wondering if there might be any more...personal usages for that power of theirs?


	20. Prodigy: Homecoming (AS)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arne returns to his home country and meets some new friends. 
> 
> (Earlier chapters are in the process of being freshened up and updated a bit, including a retcon to the current date.)

_Magnus Academy for the Extranormal, Tyramin City, Planet Sverabog, Olgram Syste, Redzan's Nebula, Yramithi Omnipragmatist Council Republic, Antennae Galaxy, Omdyn of Democratic Omnipragmatist Council Republics_

  
  
Arne sat down next to Elmorni with his thumbs twitching idly. His red eyes flicked between his hands, his adoptive mother, and the floor. His armour was shifted into a disguised form, black, red, white, and gold with a more mechanical looking hard-light guise. From his observations, the ground below was a comfortable looking floor, not overly rigid and made with pleasant rather than sterile colours. He caught glimpses of people wandering about, almost all of them stopping to stare at him and Elmorni as they waited for Ygrak, Sciomagus Stygloch, and Mortirk to finish their discussions. So many forms of life all busy with one task or the other, so many shapes and varieties he had only considered academically before. But virtually all of them, regardless of who they were, found his presence there to be aberrant. At least, he thought they did. He could feel their thoughts, and none of them seemed to hate him, yet could they not be disguising their true selves from him?  
  
"-Arne, you need not worry so much. No one here is going to be looking to make an enemy of you.-" Elmorni said, grasping his hand and holding it tight. Arne felt so much safer with her gentle grasp on his hand, knowing that at least some people here were looking out for him. Her armoured appendage was warm to his touch and smooth upon the gauntlet around his hand.  
  
The shell of armour he wore around himself was something that was built for war rather than mingling, but it made him feel more secure. The Magnus Academy Privyetkaya Campus was a new place with new concerns. There were no dangers as many had told him, but he looked at every unexpected minor movement as if he was preparing himself for a bomb to go off.  
  
But with Elmorni here, the pinprick sensation of tension, the steely coiling of his muscles into ready positions eased. He felt it more comfortable to breathe, and his thoughts were clearer and easier to form. He could notice that the seating was generally arranged into clusters to allow for people to form groups and converse, for example. His superhuman hearing drifted between differing conversations, mostly picking out what he found the most interesting.  
  
"I-I'll be okay...I promise. I can do this. S-see they're talking about wormhole juncture engineering. How to alter the conduit metastructure to form the most efficient spacetime topographical alterations in ultrahigh gravity." He said, twitching his fingers a bit as he eavesdropped in. Speaking of machines was easy; things he could build with his hands or tools or tinker with on his own time were simple and easy. He could probably impress people with those skills. Maybe some of them might even want to be his friend?  
  
"-Arne, you know what I think of you. Most of the people you meet are sure to see you the way I do. They'll learn to see the gentleness in your heart and your desire to help change things for the better. And when they do; they're going to know that they can trust you with anything.-" She said, stroking his hair gently as she whispered to him, murmuring sweetly to him when Arne rested his head on her arm while she made a quiet hum.  
  
"Do you think so?" He said before noticing Ygrak's form peeling away from the conversation towards the front to approach him. Floating overhead, the crimson Alimbic descended closer to his level and folded up her legs in a manner made possible by her strange physiology. Her glowing monocular eye shifted colouration briefly while she waited for his responses, a chirping sound of approval coming from her when he smiled.  
  
"-I know so. You've grown a great deal, impressed many who had doubts as to whether you could truly be the Neophyte. Doubts that I admit I sometimes had myself. But, it does me great joy to see that you've proven them all wrong.-" Ygrak said with her harmonious self echoing psychic voice. A voice that felt so deeply connected to him in a way he did not quite understand, but it did make him reach for her helmeted face and brush his fingers against the smooth carapace.  
  
"And you'll want me to do my best to make friends right? Fit in without uh...losing sight of who I want to be?" Arne said, hesitancy in his voice rising and then falling shortly when he tried to prepare his confidence. He fought two of the Old Foe and hordes of their machines, he could handle a routine conversation. Why was this so hard sometimes? He had fit in pretty well at Arganti...yet here he was terrified of letting go.  
  
Was it perhaps that Arganti was full of people who at the very least, would have always considered him to be one of them? Was it knowing that his guardians were never all that far away? Or was it that golden-haired figure that he longed for, feeling the ache of separation and the melancholy of not having her to make him feel wanted and safe? It might have been all of them, it probably was all of them, but he found himself wishing in particular; that he and Samus could have gone to the same facility. But his internal strife was soon sensed by Ygrak, and she rested a hand on his shoulder.  
  
"-Of course. You are the heir of two legacies: Ours, and the Skjoldrs. You can walk bridges very few others can tread upon. And I think you would have made Erik and Gyda so very proud of you.-" Ygrak said, making him widen his smile ever so noticeably as he glowed from the praise. He shifted a tablet in his hands, a collection of everything his parents had written that the Alimbics could find. His most prized possession. and one that Elmorni was delighted to see him bring.  
  
"Excuse me, are you Arne Eriksen Skjoldr?" That snapped him out of his thoughts. He turned away from his mothers and looked towards the source of the voice. He hadn't been paying proper attention to the distant sight and cursed himself a bit for letting someone sneak up on him. He chided himself further when he realised that he was looking in the wrong direction and snapped his head forwards and blinked when he saw the person confronting him.  
  
A violet-eyed human figure about his age, somewhat shorter though few were really of comparable height to him. The girl flicked her purple hair a bit with her movements, letting it flow down to the midpoint of her back. A double cowlick accentuated the many layers of cyan hair while her bangs brushed towards her face from the far left and right. She offered a somewhat slender but agile looking hand attached to a lean arm, wrapped in an all-purpose utility black, red, and purple exosuit that fit her quite snugly.  
  
"Oh uh...yeah?" He said before she thumped her chest in a Grendakal salute and made an attempt at feral grunt that probably would have sounded more intimidating from someone older than her. The augmented reality glasses on her face glinted a bit as she gave him a wide grin that only got even wider when he started to stand up, feeling that this was the appropriate thing to do. Her skin was only a few shades darker than her pearl coloured teeth, indicative of rarely going out into the sun.  
  
"I'm Solveig Alvissen Lothbrok. Magna's first daughter. It's swell as hell to get to meet you clanskin Arne!" She said as Arne responded with the traditional Grendakal salute in return. He could see that she had runic warpaint in the form of a solar burst around her right eye and a lunar crescent to the left, both given a cool midnight blue colouration. But what also caught his eye was that she seemed to swishing her hips in tune to a tune he couldn't continually. He pieced together the exact tempo of the beat and figured it was probably a song she had stuck in her head.  
  
"Well uh...well met too, clanskin Solveig. Where's your mom?" He asked, trying to sort through his words as he finished studying her features, noticing she made a self-satisfied grin when he was finished and flaunting with another hair flip. Ah, she was aware of how pretty she was. Oh no why do so many people he meets have to be so attractive? He wondered to himself as she started to hum the tune in her head.  
  
"Oh she's gonna sort some stuff out with the Departed Ancients. She seems to be getting along pretty well; Gods be praised. But she also thought that maybe it'd be best for me to talk to you first clanskin Skjoldr? Get you meeting with peers rather than guardians hrm?" She said, pausing her humming briefly as she slightly mimed the motions of a Dance that Arne busied his brain with trying to imagine moving at full throttle.  
  
"Skjoldr?" A passing octopoid like Mechanoid said as they retracted their tentacles towards themselves and turned around, getting a dark-skinned human companion of theirs to turn her head almost immediately. Ah yes, the sort of attention he was hoping to avoid. Arne looked around and saw scores of eyes and optics all focused on him, but what he got wasn't the rumours and whispers he feared, but a degree of deference...and pity.  
  
"You, survived Cylosis?" One of them hesitated to ask. The tan-skinned Aelva seemed almost unwilling to hope, perhaps what they were seeing was simply an illusion? Just an Alimbic trick? Maybe the Alimbics themselves were tricks on their eyes. Arne could understand, with how thoroughly Cylosis was laid to waste by its mysterious assailants, it would be hard to swallow anyone managing to get away.  
  
"...Yes." He said, quietly at first before repeating himself, nodding his head. But what really surprised him was the series of Grendakal salutes he got in response. Almost in unison really. They had recognised the scion of the Clan Champion; the Ikhragk of the Grendakal; and paid their due respects. The sound of so many moving in such unison startled him briefly, and he had to stop himself from letting out a brief quailing noise, but he tightened his hand and calmed down.  
  
"It's an honour to meet not merely a survivor, but the child of the last Ikhragk." The Tan-Skinned Aelva said with a humbled voice that Arne could recognise as conveying how overwhelmed they were to be in his presence. He could understand that feeling; he was feeling like he was on the edge of what he could tolerate in terms of attention being thrown his way. He liked it to be sure, but he wasn't sure of how to deal with this many people...expecting something of him. Especially as the Alimbics rose to offer their own salute, getting awed whispering from the groups gathered.  
  
The hard-light holographic avatar of the facility's primary supervising mind-spider; Ukil; warped into life, seamlessly transitioning from unreality to a proper presence. Skittering limbs supported a bulbous central body that contained some of the most advanced computer hardware of the extant powers in the known universe. And a glossy black, red, and green carapace was pockmarked by a number of glowing yellow pseudo-compound eyes that studied the room.  
  
"+Our apologies for the delay. There were a few questions we had of your caretakers that we needed answered before we could accept their requests." Ukil said, Arne's mind already disassembling the machine in his imagination, his red eyes looking over the machine with the eye of a skilled tinkerer. He was already unconsciously thinking of ways he could perhaps improve on the design and what there was of their construction to appreciate. It was simpler than some of the designs he'd worked on, but impressive all the same.  
  
"Now, we see that Solveig has already arrived to accompany you to your shared domicile. Magna will come to offer you further assistance shortly, but in the mean time, feel free to make all possible effort to get to know your domicile-companions. Should you possess any questions; Solveig will be happy to answer." Ukil said, their mechanomandibles rippling slightly as Arne nodded in understanding before noticing Solveig was busily giving a big double thumbs up.  
  
"Don't worry! I'll get him rolling with the pack in no time!" She chirped. Arne felt himself make a small smirk at that, it seems this might not be so bad after all. However, he couldn't help but feel like he was being watched by something that shouldn't be here. Flicking his eyes ever so briefly to one individual he was dead certain had an entirely different shade of hair and a slightly different body shape the last time he saw them about a minute ago. He'd bring that up later when he felt it was safe to do so.

_Dormitory Cluster Tertius_

  
Arne remained somewhat quiet on the way over to where he would be staying for the duration of his socialisation training. The room prepared for him was a blank canvas waiting for him to make his contributions to it as he needed. However, he could see that there were a few items associated with his parents there, including his parent's training exosuits that they wore when they were his age. His eyes lit up, almost immediately, taking in the details of the now obsolete blue-green training armour and running his fingers along the hands of the armour suits in their docking bays.  
  
The smooth turtle-shell like helmet with its simple T-shaped visor partly shielded by the cap of the helm felt familiar to him even though he had only seen them for the first time. He ran his fingers along the grooved mouth shield, eyes taking in the sight of the red visor and the crimson trimmings of the plating. He looked at the red coloured pauldrons, bearing the symbol of the class they went to; Erik's having a mechanical dragon of some sort, Gyda a four-winged creature somewhat like a Falcon.  
  
He almost teared up at getting to be so close to something both of his parents once wore and pulled himself in for a hug as if to imagine they were still with him. He let go of the smooth plated armour suits and sniffled out loud, looking towards Solveig who gave him a sympathetic look and offered her hand to him. A hand that he took without reservation as she walked him out of the room once she was sure he was ready.  
  
"We all miss them, you know. Mom was heartbroken when she got the news...and when she heard you were still alive. Gods, she just..." Solveig said before using her delvings into sorcery to make a firework-like burst of colours and noise in the air that got Arne to flinch and stammer. "Lit up!" She said, smiling up until she saw that Arne was not expecting a sudden bang like that in a place he considered safe.  
  
"O-Oh...sorry. Do you want more warning before I do something like that again?" She asked, getting a quick nod from the white-haired boy as the two approached the main living room.  
  
"It's something I'm trying to work on. It's not your fault, really. But yeah, a bit of warning would be appreciated." Arne said calmly as he put on his best smile and then let out a surprised gasp when he felt her hugging him briefly. He didn't mind in the slightest, of course, it was something that made him feel very...relaxed and at ease, and he returned the gesture almost immediately. His mind drifted a bit to the thoughts of how this would feel without exosuits in the way. He had to resist the urge to stroke her hair. She hadn't explicitly granted him permission to do such an intimate thing, but the thought of it against his fingers made him smile.  
  
"Well, here you'll always have lots of people willing to help you out with trauma. That's what Omdyn means; Community, Union, Togetherness." She stated reverentially before Arne completed the last parts of the rather complex meaning of the word Omdyn for her once she pulled away, both of them with ample rose on their cheeks.  
  
"Camaraderie, Fellowship, and Home." He said with a bit of his own reverence as he showed her his parent's memoir tablet briefly, relishing in the brief sight of stars in her eyes as the young sorceress just about shot over the moon at the sight. "My parents wrote a lot about all of that. And I've tried to read everything they left behind. I'm pretty eager to see how things have changed since they were gone." He said, doing his best to sound confident.  
  
"Do you have any idea how important a find like that is?" She said, awestruck and holding her mouth open a bit. Arne quirked his brow and shook his head, a gesture he learned from Elmorni to help him more easily reintegrate with his own kind.  
  
"If there's anything new in here that was never published...Gods be praised; this would be huge! Your parents wrote so many important things and aaaaaaaahhhh!" She said, taking a moment to breathe before calmly holding out her hands and being handed the tablet, her eyes flicking through the table of content and a gentle smirk forming on her face.  
  
"I know what you're going to say. Make sure it always stays safe and back it up as much as I can." Arne said, getting a pair of thumbs-ups and a very pleased smile from Solveig. He liked that, the feeling of unabashed approval. She read through a bit more of the tablet before handing it back to him, offering him her hand and blushing a bit when he took it for her.  
  
"Now come on, let's find mom for you!" She said as he scanned around the open doors leading towards the primary living room. His eyes caught a tall purple-haired figure on the approach though, seeing her rise to her feet as soon as he caught her eye and pushing herself up to her full height. Arne could immediately see the family resemblance between her and Solveig, though she had a sterner cut to her face than her daughter's more rounded; youthful look.  
  
Those orchid eyes of hers glanced over to Arne, and immediately Arne understood that she was older than she looked. That weathered stare was one built only by experience, and he got a sense of aged wisdom from her. Though she looked to be in her early twenties at most, the way she carried herself made the fact that she had served for more than half a millennium much more apparent. An old woman in a young person's game. Every red tally mark across her cheeks speaking of another century of service.  
  
A leanly powerful arm clad in her distinctive red, purple, and black power suit clanged against her chest in salute as she made the clan call of acknowledgement. With a step, she straightened her runner's limbs and made her head's worth of height advantage quite apparent. Her braided purple hair flicked behind her, and Arne returned the gesture almost immediately. Though he was a bit nervous as the Alimbics still had to conduct some business, depriving him of the personal attention of Elmorni, Ygrak, and Mortirk, he felt confident that he was making the right moves.  
  
"Helgrask, Urglik Arne." She said, offering a traditional greeting that Arne was only too happy to give a nod of acknowledgement in return for. He let himself feel more at ease as he relaxed his posture, giving her a gentle smile.  
  
"Helgrask, Urglik Magna." He said in return.  
  
She looked over him once, then twice over and made a small grin.  
  
"I was told you'd be a tall young man. Glad to see that the reports were true then." She said as she studied his face in particular.  
  
"You've got Gyda's eyes, you know? And Erik looked so much like you when he was your age..." She said wistfully, letting out a sigh as she reminisced on simpler days.  
  
"I still miss them every day." Magna said, folding her arms and gesturing to a holographic nanoscreen that reconfigured itself to show a picture of herself with his parents after they had just wedded, large smiles all around. Arne felt pained joy at that sight, a squeeze around his heart both sad that he couldn't see this moment in person but happy to know it had existed at all. He blinked away a single tear and looked back towards Magna whose look was one of sympathy.  
  
"You helped them get together, didn't you?" Arne said, receiving a nod from Magna in return before she laid a hand on Solveig's shoulder and held her close. Like she was afraid that one day if she let her go too far, she might lose her altogether. A valid concern with how many widows and orphans the current age produced.  
  
"Yeah, mom talks about the day she set them up on their first courtship so much! Just soooo much!" Solveig giggled as she laid a hand atop the appendage resting on her shoulder.  
  
"After teaching both of them separately, I couldn't help but matchmake the two of them when they showed interest in each other..." She said wistfully before rolling some fingers through Solveig's hair.  
  
"Mmmh, I wish you'd talk more about other mom or dads though." Solveig said with a smirk as she pulled away from Magna who gave a gentle laugh and shook her head.  
  
"Let's not overwhelm him too much Solveig. He'll need time to adjust."  
  
"Oookay. If you say!" Solveig grinned at her and then at Arne who felt a flush to his face when he caught a wink from the purple-haired girl. One that he did his best to return as Solveig giggled.  
  
"Cute.~" Solveig chirped while she rocked on her feet.  
  
"I well, thanks. You too.." Arne said with a hesitant thumbs-up before he decided to own the gesture and committed, getting a clap out of the young mage.  
  
"I'm just really looking forward to getting to know you better Arne! You must have soooo many interesting stories to share!" Solveig said with a cheery clap as she lowered her augmented reality glasses to stare more directly at him.  
  
"Well, not all of them are that interesting, but I'll let you decide which ones are. Alright?" Arne said, clearing his throat and winning himself a cat-like expression from the bubbly young woman as she just about vibrated with anticipation.  
  
He couldn't help but think of how she reminded him of Samus...though there were differences of course, quite major ones. She was so much less blunt and whereas Samus always had bubbling outrage beneath her chipper exterior waiting to be prodded into motion, from Solveig he sensed something more like an...addiction. An addiction to thrill, a need to be near something interesting and exciting. Beneath her exterior was a burning need to always look for something fresh. Not so much the unquenchable thirst for knowledge of Samus as the daredevil hunger for something novel.  
  
"Ooooh I'm going to love hearing everything so so sooooo much! Ah, it's going to be a pain to not just dip into my foresight and try and guess what you're going to tell me. Eeeeeee!" She said with a spin and a twirl as if she needed to burn off a bit of her excess energy until Magna put a hand on her head to still her trembling excitement. "I can't wait! Come on tell me something right now!"  
  
"Good to see the two of you can get along so well, but your Clusterkin will be waiting in the living room. Come on, let's not keep them waiting." Magna said as she willed the door behind them to open, the octagonal door pulling itself away to give the trio access to the other side.  
  
Feeling the sensation of something approaching at high speeds, Arne stopped and ducked beneath a thrown ball, reaching out and catching it in hand before tossing it back to the sender. His eyes followed the thrown sphere right back to a charming looking burgundy haired elven eared Aelvan boy whose dextrous ivory and scarlet plated hands caught the incoming sphere in a single movement. Lean and devastatingly handsome, his presence made Arne feel much the same way that Solveig and Samus were making him as he gulped, once again wondering why everyone here had to be so hot. Giving the ball a spin, the third eye warpaint on his forehead glowed briefly as the psychic studied Arne with clear interest.  
  
"Well hello there, handsome. Name's Illarion Aelgrad Tyriomyr." He said with calm interest before giving a wink of acknowledgement to Solveig who flushed at the gesture.  
  
Arne went slightly redder again as he sucked in a breath and tried his best to meet the rust coloured eyes of Illarion. He wasn't quite shy as not sure how to deal with the attention, but his attention was quickly drawn to illarion having the ball shrunk down until he could fit it into one of the pockets of his utility belt. His mind already at work, trying to understand the mechanisms of the action and unpack what he had just seen. And of course, trying to peel away from how flustered the bedheaded youth and his companion made him.  
  
"Illarion, give him a bit of space." Magna said, getting a respectful salute from him in return as Arne's eyes scanned over the two. "Now, where's the rest of the Cluster?" Magna asked, placing her hands on her hips while Illarion gave out a whistle.  
  
"Come on urgliks, Skjoldr's here." He said, the first response being a somewhat agitated feminine response.  
  
"FOR THE MILLIONTH TIME YOU DONT'T NEED TO WHISTLE THAT LOUD!" She said as a black-haired Aelvan girl stormed out, her twin tails streaking down to her waist as she cracked her neck. She wasn't clad in an exosuit just yet but wore a grey shirt that Arne recognised had an angry-looking mammalian beast chomping down on a planet while her blue trousers rustled against itself as she walked towards the group and then stopped at the sight of Arne. She pulled herself out of her slouch and rubbed at her eyes, making the shark took like facepaint marks on her cheeks stretch a bit with her skin. Confirming that he was indeed real, her scowl turned into a grin and her brow rose up and down her slender face in rapid succession while her ears pricked straighter.  
  
"Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeey~." She said with a grin and a finger pistol gesture that got her a wave in response. Yet more pretty people, Arne internally quivered as the moonlight skinned Aelvan joined with her equally sun-averse counterpart and stretched herself a bit. "I'm Taellarja Jelvaer Syndermin. Didn't expect you to look that much like your dad. Nice." She said wiping off the anger that he saw on her face not even a minute ago as if it were all just an illusion she could dismiss at any time. He caught her mouthing the word "Later" to Solveig and nodded with realisation when Solveig bashfully looked away from Taellarja with crimson all over her face.  
  
"What is it-it? I'm trying to work on finding that shapeshifter!" A smaller voice said, hissier as if the speaker was trying to force the sounds out of sharp teeth and past a forked tongue. He caught the sight of a reptilian humanoid figure about a head shorter than him crawling on the ceiling, flicking out their tongue from a head somewhat like a maniraptor's while their red crest flicked up from their blue scaled body. He lowered himself, clawed legs still stuck to the ceiling and tail whipping back and forth with curiosity as he took his goggles off his eyes and blinked the membranes across the yellow orbs to get a closer look at Arne.  
  
"Ooohhh, you are the human hybrid boy. Ah much shame-apologies for making this a not amazing-great first impression. Name is-say; Loxtoqil Muehuatax Ulhyote. I make-fidget with machines very well." He said before dropping from the ceiling, catching himself on his clawed hands and righting himself onto his feet before Taellarja patted him on the head and got him to hiss like a boiling pot before pushing her hand away. With her no longer threatening to disturb him, he took a look at his green power suit and tinkered with some of the controls.  
  
"Not time for touch-play." He growled before Illarion snorted.  
  
"It's never time to touch you."  
  
"Yes-true. But will you respect that Urglik?" He hissed.  
  
"Obviously." Illarion said, getting a thumbs up from Solveig.  
  
"So...where's the last one?" Arne said before he felt a vibration from something large moving. He turned his head around and followed his distant sight to catch sight of a large and imposing mechanoid, bipedal and already cracking her knuckles as she stepped into view. To Arne's eyes the figure moved like a veritable colossus, her frame like the cross of a knight, a factory armature, and a main battle tank. She would have towered over even Magna, and her black, green, and yellow frame's back mounted winglets folded behind her as she stomped into view, her bar-code scanner like optics scanning across the room before fixating on the gathered figures.  
  
Arne did his best to be friendly and offered a wave that to his surprise, the mechanoid returned without hesitation. "Helgrask Urglik Arne." She said formally as she folded her hands behind her back and stood at attention.  
  
"Come on, here and now Elgramor?" Illarion said with an eye roll before Taellarja coughed to get his attention and remind him to be polite. That got a bit of a snort out of Arne.  
  
"Just let her be formal if she wants! It's not the end of the world, right Elgra?" Solveig said as the young growing synthetic gave an affirmative beep in response as a considerably smaller looking human walked to the fore beside her.  
  
"I have aspirations towards more formal duties when my growing processes are complete. It would be ideal for me to maintain appearances here and now." She said, hardly even flinching at the sudden company to her side.  
  
"Trust me, there's much bigger things to worry about than overformality. Is that the new guy?" The human next to Elgramor said, dusting off their gauntleted hands and pulling off their antennaed helmet after opening up the back of it to push off the angled mouthguard to reveal a golden-haired human youth with features that would have had them pegged for being east Asian. Their red bodied armour had blue trimmings and white highlights, and was clearly built with ranged combat in mind. Arne's eyes picking up how it was clearly meant to channel focused energy from within their body outwards into nanite formable projectors. The contours of the armour's conduits forming clever patterns that Arne admired the efficiency of, just as he took a shining to the boy's soft, slender face and their striking blue eyes; framed by slightly messy mid-neck length gilded hair that covered parts of their ears and partly covered one of their eyes.  
  
From his brief study of them, Arne figured them to have decided to not cleanly present as any particular gender but had a bit of a preference towards masculinity.  
  
"Yeah, I'm Arne." He said, offering the traditional clan salute and getting one in return.  
  
"Zhang Kai. You look, interesting." Kai said, giving a satisfied smile as they quickly regarded both Arne the wearer of the suit and the suit he was wearing itself, clearly transfixed by both in equal measure as he offered a wave of acknowledgement to the others.  
  
"Don't worry about the others, we're all incorrigible flirts here." Kai said with a grin that Arne found...enticing.  
  
"Well, I think that's everyone; no?" Magna said with a satisfied smirk.

Elmorni and her cohort glid into the room, offering a brief Tetrarch salute to the gathered group that Arne returned unhesitatingly. After but a second, Elmorni lowered her hand from its parallel position to her chest, her soft psychic voice vibrating through the air. The tone as almost always, was gentle and sweet, like honey to Arne's ears. He could ever feel safe with her and opened his arms up to give and receive a warm hug from her; relishing in her maternal warmth before the other Alimbics laid their hands on him.

"-You're growing into such a strong young man, Arne. I'm going to miss you so much. Please, whatever you do, never forget your desire to help those in need.-" She said to him as he rubbed his cheek affectionately against the armoured form of Elmorni.

"I'm going to miss you too, mom. All of you." He said, sniffling a bit and wiping away some of his shed tears. His cheeks were puffy, and his eyes were a bit heavy. This was going to be the first time he was going to be entirely without her support and care for long periods.

"I can call you as much as I want right?" He asked, wiping away a sniffle with his finger and giving her a small smile.

"-Of course, though General Zurvduat might complain.-" Ygrak said, a small joking tone evident in her voice that drew no mirth from him. She paused as she seemed to realise her mistake and asked for his forgiveness, sensing the turbulence in his mind at the mention of his...father.

Despite everything, something in him wanted Zurvduat's approval, his acceptance and love. He still saw him as his father at the end of the day, and that troubled Elmorni in particular immensely as her psychic expression dimmed briefly.

"-Arne, he can't hurt you here. You're safe. These are good people who will stand by you and aid you. You can finally be the way you want, not just what the General asks.-" Elmorni said, placing her hand on his chin and tipping his gaze up towards hers. He managed a smile and laid a hand on hers, clearing out his nose and blinking a few times.

"I've read your file Arne; you're in good care here. We'll help you out with everything you've missed on over the years. And I trust this place with my own daughter." Magna said, patting Solveig on the shoulder as the enthusiastic young lady grinned and offered an enthusiastic wave.

"Yeah, I'd love to have another boy here! Especially when you've got so many nexcite things to talk about!" She said, almost immediately drawing a confused stare from Arne as his smile faded into a look of befuddlement.

"It means like....hyper-excitingly interesting? Like, I don't just want to hear about it, I need you to talk to us about it! I could write so many things down about it and make so many xelketsch notes!" She said, her smile slowly fading when she saw that Arne's look went from one of understanding to even further confusion to the point that even the Alimbics seemed a bit lost.

"It means inspiring for an idea that you know, you really want to get out there—a story you gotta share. " Illarion said with a relaxed expression, patting Solveig on the head and getting a purr out of her. Arne felt slightly jealous, the coil of that serpentine creature of envy wringing around his chest while he thought of what it'd be like to feel his hand on his hair, but nodded in acceptance all the same. They could share, he figured, consoling himself once the serpent loosened its grip on his chest.

"Well...okay, I think I'm going to have to sit and learn all this vernacular some time. I'm, definitely not familiar with half of what you people say." Arne said with a bit of a snort coming in response from Taellarja who waved it off.

"Don't worry Arne, we'll help you out. It'd be my genuine pleasure to even." She said with a confident smirk as she straightened herself out just a bit. She stretched her legs slightly and fidgeted just a bit with her arms to relieve some muscular tension before she placed her hands behind her head and sucked in some air.

"This place has helped a lot of people who've lost family out. Like myself. I'm not sure if I'd have handled losing my uncle's family very well without the kinds of friends I made here." Kai said, gesturing to everyone else and getting a pat on the back from Illarion.

"-See Arne, you'll be in wonderful company here. And I'm sure that Samus and the others will continue to visit. Like the Faeran youths you seem fond of.-" Mortirk said with a gentle pat to his shoulder as he scanned around the crowd.

"-Certainly these facilities are more suited for childcare than our own. I'd have liked coming here in my time.-" Stygloch said, the white armoured young Alimbic's tone courteous but intrigued, his arms folded behind his back and his singular luminescent silvery eye focused on the attentions of Elgramor who couldn't help but study him intently with her laser optics.

"I'm still not sure why you'd want to leave the company of progenitors for people like us. But I'm flattered you decided to come and join our group." Elgramor said as she finally turned her attentions away from the only recently matured Sciomagus who offered her a curtsy of acknowledgement in return.

"Well, as he's said, they don't have the facilities to help watch over a growing young man like him as he matures. But we'll be sure to take the best care of him, won't we?" Magna said, turning her attention over to the Cluster who all gave their affirmations in virtual unison.

"You can count on me to do my best." Kai said, giving the traditional Grendakal salute as Arne made note of how unlike many here; they had no tattoos or facepaint. Hrm, he'd have to ask why.

"Will be interesting-fascinating to speak to a human raised by those with such...knowledge. You must know-understand many things yes, Arne?" Loxtoqil said flicking out his tongue periodically.

Arne felt slightly flustered at all the positive attention thrown his way. He was so used to the quiet loneliness of Sentus Primaris that the past two years of suddenly having so many people his age to speak to felt overwhelming. Like going from never having swam in his life to being pressed into ever deeper and more turbulent waters. It was not necessarily unpleasant, but he found the certainties of battle and engineering to be...simpler for him to grasp.

But Magna was able to sense his troubled mind quickly, her eyes rapidly shifting from the Alimbics to him as she gently looked down and gave him a reassuring smirk that soon bared its teeth towards him. He understood this was an open lipped grin at least, and meekly returned the gesture even if it felt a bit unusual for him.

"-See, hardly anything to worry about, is there?-" Elmorni said as she patted her son on his back and cooed gently. It was a warm gesture that made his heart feel soft for a moment, but when she mentioned a lack of things to be concerned about, he shot his eyes open and turned towards the Cluster.

"Do any of you know any shapeshifters?" Arne asked, deciding to broach the question while the mood was still good. It was a silly question, of course; there were plenty of beings in the universe able to alter their shape. That figure he saw earlier was probably nothing to be concerned about. It was all probably just another thing he'd have to get used to.

"There's quite a lot here. Do you mean the one that Loxtoqil is trying to find though?" Magna said, her hands finding their way to her hips as she quirked a brow.

"Ah, see-understand now? We're not the only ones who see-perceive this intruder!" Loxtoqil said with an expression that the Neophyte figured was his species' version of a look of elated vindication. His eyes swivelled upwards, his jaw hung open, his tongue flicked side to side, his tail waved up and down, and his crest was in full flare. While he lacked the sort of skin or cultural upbringing to make facial expressions similar to his own, Arne was pretty good at working out emotions from beings he couldn't read the face of. The vibrant colours radiating from him in his mind's eye, for example; were a pretty good indication that he was feeling very sure of himself right at this moment. Which was reassuring to the young boy, he'd be able to work his way around most conversations here for the time being.

"And what would they even be trying to do here?" Illarion said with a shrug and a laugh. "Just wandering around gheisting on students?" He scoffed a bit before realising Arne was once again lost. "Oh, that means haunting people, following them around and being unsettling." He added, brushing a hand through his hair and giving an easy smirk to let Arne know it was no trouble. He was show-offy and brash, but he would never be meanspirited.

"Like you aren't used to people staring at you." Taellarja said with a smirk and a scoff before Illarion rolled his eyes at her and made a mock huffing sound of faux-disappointment. "It's true you know. How'd you know the difference between people who just want to ogle and people trying to hunt you?" She said teasingly, giving him a little elbow to the ribs that got a faked "ow" out of him.

"Okay, okay Arne asked a question so why don't we get together and hrmmm...answer it maybe? That sound good to you all?" Solveig said, looking around and getting a few nods of approval in response. "Tixebar." She said approvingly.

That at least, wasn't a slang term, simply an Omdyrzschpiel term that didn't translate super well to the Uskarlyc he was used to speaking. He understood it, though, which filled him with no small measure of pride. A term somewhere between "wonderful", an enthusiastic "yes!" and "this will do."

"We could probably check with some watch volunteers? They'd have answers." Kai added.

"Well, I've seen it at least." Elgramor said, folding her arms while Magna nodded politely and the Alimbics studied with interest, Stygloch even rubbing his hand against his floating chin as he pondered for a few moments.

"-Interesting Arne, it seems you've already found your first task.-" Mortirk said with a bit of joking pride, eye flashing from gold to blue with interest before shifting colours again.

"I...yeah I guess I have." Arne said with a nervous laugh. He had barely arrived here and there was already a trial in waiting for him.

"-Not quite so fast, he should investigate at his own pace. I'm sure that it will be quite harmless based on my readings of the distant sight.-" Elmorni said with a gentle wave, turning her full attention towards her son who nodded in appreciation.

"-At the very least, he should have some time to orient himself in this facility before trying to find anyone in it. He is still unused to being around so many people. Give him time.-" Ygrak said, gesticulating gently as her harmonious but firm psychic voice rang in the ears of all present.

"-Certainly, there should be some allowance of time to have fun first and foremost too. We will need to get him relaxed and integrated with the population after all. Otherwise, aren't we all wasting our time?-" Stygloch added to the approving nods of most of the adults gathered here.

"-Besides, I'm sure many of these students are very eager to get to know the Neophyte better.-" He concluded, folding his arms behind his back once more as Arne flushed slightly red in the cheeks and looked at the interested expressions on everyone else's face.

"-Oh but of course, Arne. This is meant to be a time for you first and foremost, my darling Knight. Please, do everything you can to make yourself at home and regale me with all the little stories of the friends you've made whenever you want.-" Elmorni said in her matronly tone, bending down towards Arne and dropping onto her knees.

"Yes, moms, dads?" Arne said, looking up to the gathered Alimbics as they approached.

"-Above all other things, remember that there will always be people looking out for you. No matter how lonely the universe may seem. Just as you should always be looking to help where you can. Just like your parents did.-" Elmorni concluded before pressing her forehead to his own and shared a moment of psychic warmth with him. Something very much like a kiss to his forehead before she floated upwards.

"...Can't you stay, at least a little longer?" Arne said, tearing up again as he realised that this would be saying goodbye for at least a little while. He sniffled as an emptiness began to fill his chest. He already knew the answer, but it didn't make the simmering anxiety lessen at all.

"-There are things we must attend to, my little knight. Other Alimbics in stasis we must reawaken and help readjust to the way things are now; other people who need our guidance. But I'll always find a way to make time for you, my son. Never forget that.-" She said as she started to hover away, Arne's hand gripped around hers before his fingers began to relax and slowly let go.

"...I love you." Arne finally said.

"-I love you too." She responded.

"Aww, Arne, don't worry. We're all friends here! And I'd love to have you join us!" Solveig said as she offered him a hug. A hug that he quickly returned as she gave him a pair of cheek kisses and exhaled contently before pulling away, something that most of the group save for Loxtoqil and Elgramor offered shortly afterwards. Arne felt a bit flushed at so much contact in quick succession and made a note of the different ways they embraced him.

Solveig was enthusiastic, bubbly and lingered a bit with her hug as if she wanted to really understand what it was like to hold him. Illarion rather, sought to do it in a bolder and more assertive way, and whereas Solveig's eye contact with him afterwards was bashful, Illarion's was challenging. Though both got him to blush all the same. Taellarja was outright probing, hungry almost, she wanted more, and tried to leave him wanting more herself. Kai was explorative, curious, but slightly distant, unsure of how to approach him but wanting to make an effort anyway properly.

Loxtoqil gave a prolonged hiss and a bow of the head to acknowledge Arne, while Elgramor's beeping had a slightly more pleasant than usual tone. She was clearly sympathetic to his plight, and Arne felt appreciative even if they weren't much for giving him their embrace.

But of course, the moment had to end eventually and the seven had given each other their space. Magna, moments from leaving, turned towards the group gathered behind her and offered a sweet smile.

"There's not much going on academically at the moment, so feel free to take the time to explore. Now, Solveig, can you promise me something?" Magna said as she paused at the exit, Solveig's eyes lighting up from the acknowledgement.

"Yes, mom?" She asked, letting her curiosity linger for a bit as she tried her best to peer into the causeways of destiny, making a quick incantation and a few gestures before closing her eyes and casting her astral sight into the beyond. Arne could perceive her spiritual form taking a look at the endless, shifting roads of possibility and narrowing it down to the most likely ones. And with that information, she could easily guess at her answer, and all at once her eyes lit up and she shook her hands with excitement. Ah, she had got it! She understood!

"Oooh! You want me to make sure he's got as many friends here as he feels comfortable with right? I can do that, mom! Don't worry; I am the urglic for the task!" She said, giddy with anticipation and just about vibrating with eagerness that she'd managed to filch the answer from the future. And she was even prouder of herself when she saw that Magna had the most glowing of smiles for her in return.

"Correct as usual. I'm sure you'll do great. Now, I must be off. Take care all of you." She said, giving a farewell salute before stepping out.

"Well, anyone want to hit one of the rec-areas? Might be good to stretch our legs a bit hrm? Might catch some of the volunteer watchers there too. I know I'll catch some of their eyes at least" Illarion offered as he stood up and gestured towards the door with a supremely confident smile before Solveig tapped on her chin a bit and nodded.

"I think I know just the one to visit. Come on companions!" She said, gesturing everyone to follow her as she tried her best to contain her energy to something approaching a reasonable level of activity.

"Oh I think I know the place she wants." Kai said, quirking their brows and then looking towards Arne and giving him a come hither gesture. Unnecessary of course, Skjoldr knew that they were moving out already, but he gave a look of acknowledgement all the same; manifesting his helmet over his face once again.

"So if you look that way Arne you'll see the way to one of the gymnasiums. Specially rated for people with enhanced abilities, so I'm sure you'll find a way to keep busy!" She said, gesturing over to a hallway where Arne cast his gaze down, catching a glimpse of a number of pupils hard at work rolling away from some manner of stabbing machine with quite a substantial number of limbs.

"That looks...dangerous for lower grade combatants." Arne said, some uncomfortable memories of the endless hours of drilling against the machinery of Sentus Primaris surfacing for a second until he choked them back down. He wasn't going to let that pain rule him; he would survive, he would overcome.

His breathing was tense, and everyone knew it, with Illarion being the first to offer him a shoulder pat in sympathy. He felt a bit tenser, Arne would have felt more comfortable had Solveig or Taellarja offered the motion, and he almost felt a brief shudder at the sight of Illarion's hand raised and close to his head.

"...You gonna be okay there?" Illarion said as Arne gulped and shook his head, relaxing his breathing when Taellarja approached instead. Arne wanted to get closer to Illarion, but simply knowing that Illarion was a he made the sight of his raised hand alarming to the boy. That animal instinct to seek shelter in the face of oncoming pain making itself loud in his mind's ear.

Solveig whispered something to Illarion, that his superhuman could easily make out. "(He was abused a lot before coming here. He's got...problems with male authority figures. Try not to seem too dominant.)" Arne made a pensive face at that. Being described in such terms made his stomach simmer with unease and drew a frown on his thin lips.

Taellarja noticed the issue and spoke up quickly. "So, Arnie, we're almost there. Rec-area's juuuuust past that gym. We've got all the best fun stuff to do with friends there. We should try some of it out you know?" She said, harrumphing to get Arne's attention and a nod out of him.

"She speaks the truth-facts. Much to do there. Also very likely to contain-hold people who see what goes around-on in this place. I will ask-make questions to see what some people might know about our shapeshifter issue." Loxtoqil said with eagerness. Right, duty, a mission, something he could focus on and feel like he was progressing towards finishing. That helped put his mind at ease.

With that, he breathed in and relaxed and took another look around his surroundings, his eyes catching on a rather pleasant looking outdoor area that made him draw in a pleased breath. "Oh...wow you've got some fascinating looking specimens there." He said, even limited to only what he could see through the window the sight and its riot of carefully blended together colours sparked a sort of primal joy in him. Samus had taught him to appreciate the beauty in all things, and right now he felt like he was surrounded by it in this warmly lit and cosy looking hallway and its myriad paths.

"Oh, those? I made a few of the suggestions for this year myself." Elgramor said as Arne pressed his face close to the window and looked down. He looked out with amazement in his eyes and couldn't help but imagine himself reaching out and touching the wonders of the garden or its selection of suitable fauna. He could almost imagine Hugin and Munin flying around, and then found himself frowning when he realised he left them back home. He should call Elmorni to bring them over...Geri and Freki too, he thought to himself.

"You've got great taste, I like it a l-" Arne paused when he thought he saw someone who had once been a child not a few moments ago now have their place taken by a spidery alien several times more massive than he was. Given that it was a reasonably open bench, it should have been impossible for the girl just to disappear, but there they were. At least, until they disappeared and his usual distant sight visions felt unusually clouded by some other presence. He frowned and rubbed at his temples, grunting a bit out of frustration. Something had to be meaningful there if his ordinary foresight was being interfered with.

"Did anyone else see that?" Arne asked before he was tapped on the shoulder by Kai. He was aware that many presences had gathered around him and lacked much in the way of hostility. However, he was not particularly focused on those visions. At least, not up until he was pulled from his thoughts by the tap. All at once, he became far more aware that a large group of people had congregated near him, and he made a gasp of surprise when he felt the paths of destiny clog with imminent questions and curiosity.

He spun around and saw Kai thumbing over to the group that had gathered near him, many species and people of many ages who were simply fascinated by the fact that someone amongst them could be wearing Alimbic armour.

He couldn't help but notice how so many people looked at him with awe. As if they could hardly believe that he was actually there. It made him feel self-conscious, aware of everyone's expectations for him and the legacy he'd have to live up to if he wished to fill the void his parents left properly.

He almost wished he could cloak himself right about now, and set his mind on working out how to create such a device. It'd be handy for more situations than just this for sure, but for now he was just glad that he had his helmet up and thus kept his face a mystery to the would be observers. It still got him looks, but at least people couldn't see how he responded to them for now.

He looked around and gulped a bit. He tried to shy away from confronting so many people at once, sulking away as quickly as he could while the cluster surrounded him. He'd love to indulge all their questions at some other point, but right now he was dealing with a strong feeling of not having done much to earn this kind of attention.

After all, what did he do for the Omdyn or any other member of the intergalactica so far? He couldn't even answer the mystery of who could have killed Cylosis. His initial theory seem to be so impossible after actually meeting with the Chozo and seeing their great influence over the federation. And if he couldn't answer that...what good was he so far really? Certainly not anywhere near enough to warrant this kind of interest.

He quickly caught on to how exosuit fashion seemed to be the norm. Seeking to style functional and practical wear such as environmental exosuits into something for everyday life. Everyone patterned and coloured theirs somewhat differently, applying their own aesthetics to their power armour. Some wore more conventional clothing over it, but it seemed that for the most part, every citizen of this region of the Omdyn considered at the very least environmental suits to be their civilian wear.

"Hey, Solveig. Does everyone wear suits at all times to make species that have to wear them in other environments feel more comfortable?" Arne asked, approaching Solveig who flicked her head around with a whipping motion of purple hair, nodding enthusiastically in response to his question.

"Mhrm! Also means that in case something goes wrong, people can just fold up their helmets and be fine. And it also well...makes it easier to fit in with all the synthetics honestly!" She said with enthused excitement as she walked ahead, deciding to lead the group while she hummed a jaunty tune.

"It helps organics keep up in many ways without requiring invasive procedures, an efficient solution." Elgramor said plainly.

"Heads up guys, we're almost to the rec room. Now if my luck holds, and it always does, the best team game in this entire building should be free for some seven on seven." Kai said, their expression turning to one of tremendous anticipation.

"Ooooh I can't wait!" Solveig giggled.

"...What game is that?" Arne asked in confusion.

"Now, if I'm right, and I definitely am. There should be a Venger Wars tournament going on right now!" Solveig said as they passed through the door.

"Oh...well, you're probably going to have to teach me about it then." Arne nodded.

"Oooh yessss I'd love to!" She said with a wide smirk.

The recreation area was an expansive vista, full of wonderful sights and delights in a social space for the inhabitants of the building. Arne's eyes caught sight of hundreds of individuals from dozens of different species just in the area in his line of sight. He almost didn't know where to even begin. He spotted an off-duty volunteer, the figure busying themselves with shaping some manner of nanite clay into artistic shapes for the benefit of some of the younger pupils.

"Am I supposed to just..go up to them?" Arne asked, not exactly sure on the proper protocol here. Asking the Alimbics for favours without solicitation often ended in him getting chided for his lack of self-reliance. At least, as long as they leaned more towards Zurvduat's theorems on how to raise and treat him. But with those memories in mind, simply walking up to someone in a position of authority like that felt...wrong. There had to be some sort of procedure to it, right?

But the answer he got was pretty surprising, with Elgramor simply walking up behind the four-limbed semi-avian volunteer guardsman. He had read about the rather bold and lackadaisical attitude towards authority his parents' home nations had, but to see it in motion was something else. He almost internally cringed when Elgramor just made a salute and a request of the beaked and saurian headed guard whose wings flapped behind them in sync with their turning.

"Urglik, would you happen to have seen any unfamiliar shapeshifters lately?" She said plainly.

"A few, One in particular that never seems to mingle with anyone, just watching a few people now and then." They said with a somewhat whistly voice.

"I've notified the Mind-Spider. We'll be putting out a notice later today. But if you manage to catch them in a conversation, be sure to share what you learned." They continued before turning back to their sculpture, shifting some of its colourations.

Elgramor turned back towards Arne and walked over as he gave a nod and his thanks to the mechanoid. "Taken care of. Just do your best to keep an eye out. Anyway, if we're going to be here let's do the fun things yes?" Elgramor said, giving Arne the impression she always preferred to just get to the chase.

"Well, if all is good-pleasing to you, I will go and demonstrate-show some of my work to the others in the tinker-builder club. Have got-done many things since my last meeting with them. I will come back-return later." Loxtoqil said, excusing himself as he skittered off into the distance before Elgramor walked off after him, her footfalls significantly quieter than one would expect of someone of her size.

"Oh uh...already?" Arne said, looking to Illarion who smirked a bit as he laid his hands on his hips.

"Yeah, it's pretty fun to sit in and watch them talk though. Usually, not my thing but Kai's had a lot of fun with it at least." He said, gesturing over to Kai and pulling them slightly closer after getting a read that they were okay with it. He tried to do the same to Arne but found his telekinesis simply...not working at all on Arne. He realised his mistake quickly and brushed it off with an easy grin.

"Right...Alimbic hybrid." Illarion said with a small laugh.

"Yeah...altered human." Arne said, almost as if he was trying to correct Illarion who raised a brow until Taellarja cut in with a harrumph.

"So...before we get knee-deep into Loxtoqil showing how big his scaly brain is, why don't we show you a few more things first Arnie?" She said, clapping a hand onto his shoulder after sensing that he wasn't going to pull away and grinning at him.

He didn't flinch at the shoulder grab, but he did turn his helmeted head towards her as she tapped on his faceplate.

"Come on, live a little." She said, and with a bit of reluctance, he closed his eyes and dismissed his helm in a flash of blue light.

"Better.~" She giggled while Solveig urged them to keep going.

"Come on; we don't want just to stand around when there's so, so, sooooo much fun stuff to do right?" She said, offering her hand to Arne and leading him through a procession of all manner of intriguing-looking activities. Games, a few smaller-scale sports that didn't need the gymnasium, artistic and other social events, and some people just trying to experiment with their self-expression all flooded his eyes and ears.

Some people were trying out some music; painters were attempting to capture the hustle and bustle, impromptu dances gathering and shaking out their worries; some people gathering around and spectating for a cooperative holo-game of adventure and exploration. Even a few people just sitting around; talking about what was going on or commenting on things they watched together. All that and more almost overwhelming his senses as he could hear so many conversations going on. Arne was glad he learned how to filter out what he didn't really care for, but it almost felt perverse to be able to just listen in on anything here he wanted. But even that couldn't diminish the wonder of seeing all this unfolding all around him with a number of people just...living he never really before imagined. People of all ages and stripes. So many people his age too, and with relatively light supervision from elders who were content to let the youth play as they will so that they could find themselves and bond with their friends.

His eyes drifted to a few people playing around with miniatures made of nanites shifted into shapes; ordering them around and watching the small robots mime out a conflict; holographic lights and sounds completing the illusion.

"What kind of game is that?" He asked, Solveig's face lighting up as she saw an opportunity to bombard him with information.

"Ooooh yes, it's Venger Wars! Come on; I'll explain the whole ruleset to you! It's super simple to pick up!" She said, urging Arne forward while Kai whispered "Hope you don't need to be anywhere soon." to Arne as the group clustered near one of the tables.

Arne was about to sit down at the table, but he caught a glimpse of a figure with pink hair who hadn't been there before. But when he saw the specific shade of pink, he felt a brief chill. One that grew into a jolt of panic and recognition of something he had thought he had left behind when he briefly locked eyes with the figure that crackled unpleasantly. He felt a crawling sensation he hadn't felt since Cylosis. A lump formed in his throat and sweat beaded down.

"Arne, you okay?" Illarion said with concern.

He stopped squeezing his hand around the table after realising he'd crunched it like foil between his fingers. The smell of cold ash disappeared from his nostrils, and he shook his head, tapping his disguised armour nervously.

He no longer saw the pink-haired figure, but he figured they might have been the shapeshifter. No sign of teleportation, but they had vanished in a way that not even his senses could pick them up.

"..I...saw something that brought me back to bad places. Pink haired woman, like on Cylosis. Stared right at me." He breathed.

"I'll put out a memo, don't worry Arne." Solveig said, laying her hand atop his as the table's nanites began to reconfigure them into their proper shape while he breathed out and muttered his thanks.

"Now...let's take your mind off that with some competitive wargaming! First...let me explain army composition.~" Solveig grinned.

* * *

**Arne's Logbook Entries**

Individuals: Human-Alimbic Hybrid: Male: Omdyn Born: Independent: Alive: Arne Eriksen Skjoldr

Arne was initially presumed deceased after the mysterious assault on Cylosis would turn up at the doors of the Magnus Academy for the Extranormally gifted roughly a decade after his supposed demise. While he had no real clues as to the origin of the attackers beyond his mother having a theory that they were Federation in origin, he was found to have been raised by the Alimbics as a squire of the Tetrarch Order. Knight-General Zurvduat's parenting methods have been classified as abusive, cruel and harshly disciplinarian. Mystromagus Elmorni, on the other hand, seems to have genuinely loved the child, and her treatment and care, as well as his socialisation practice with other progenitor or progenitor, touched youth has done much to maintain a basic level of social functionality. Augmented with Alimbic genetics and given an Alimbic suit of squire armour, Arne shows tremendous promise though he is reluctant to talk about many of his experiences.

Arne's Notes:

It's ironic how despite all the time I spent looking up to mom and dad, I never really realised just how many other people also admired them. It's difficult to have to live up to those expectations, but people here seem understanding at least.

Organisations: Academic: Intergalactican Established: Extranormal: Project Outreach

Project Outreach is the Intergalactica's "Mission for the assistance of extranormally gifted youth" designed in accordance with the lived experiences of many extranormal individuals and associations with the aid of experienced pedagogues and psychologists. Project Outreach seeks to provide young extranormals with comforting environments where they can associate with peers and practice their abilities in preparation for adult life. Given the often traumatic circumstances of many such extranormals' shifting into an extranormal state, Project Outreach's facilities are also well accustomed to dealing with those with significant psychological harm in need of therapy. After its launch, Project Outreach had its mission scope expanded to include adult extranormals, though its focus remains on youth and children.

 _Arne's Notes:_

It's pretty comforting to know that these people are good at working with people like me. I'm just hoping that I'll be able to live up to everyone's expectations for what I'll get out of this place.

Technologies: Computer: Synthetic Consciousness: Mechanical: Mind-Spiders

Mind-Spiders serve as lynchpins of the cybernetic networks that underpin the whole of Omdyn and Intergalactican society. Mind-Spiders are gestalts of highly sophisticated inorganic computer systems, with virtually unparalleled and continually growing processing power. Mind-Spiders are referred to as such for their ability to rapidly compile "webs" of information and their supervisory role over the decentralised cybernetic web of societal coordination, helping keep all facets of society in touch. Mind-Spiders typically consider themselves to be more advisors than overseers and only exercise direct managerial authority when it is deemed either necessary or if the officials to be affected by such a decision have democratically given their consent.

 _Arne's Notes:_

The sort of software that goes into a Mind-Spider is absolutely fascinating. It reminds me a lot of working on Volva honestly, even if the methods are cruder, there's a lot of...art that goes into meshing the parts together into a gestalt individual. Maybe I could try making my own someday?

Individuals: Human: Female: Omdynisch: Uskarling: RGA (Retired): Teacher: Alive: Magna Alvisdottir Lothbrok

Magna is frequently considered to be one of the finest warriors and individuals that clan Grendakal has ever produced. The teacher to many famous individuals and a legend in her own right, Magna's long career spanned centuries of distinguished service across the known universe. Magna also served extensively as an Errant Freelancer before eventually, she had decided she had seen enough of violence and sought to retire. She continued to pass on her wisdom to others who sought it and would still occasionally sortie out with all of her usual skill. Magna is also famous for teaching Erik and Gyda Skjoldr, and had plans to help them raise Arne before their untimely death. Saddened by this turn of events, Magna redoubled her efforts to teach her daughter Solveig how to follow in her footsteps and right these wrongs. Even to this day, Magna is highly regarded for her skill at education and combat as well as having a gentle, patient attitude towards helping people in need.

 _Arne's Notes:_

Mom and Dad wrote a lot about their time learning from her. Mom especially almost saw her as more of a mother than the woman who gave birth to her sometimes. But everything I read about Magna shows her as One of the best of the best. Someone everyone wants to be. I hope I can be like that at least.

Individuals: Human: Mages: Female: Omdynisch: Uskarling: Student: Alive: Solveig Magnasdottir Lothbrok

Solveig is the youngest daughter of the legendary Magna Lothbrok and rearing her takes up a large portion of her efforts. Immensely excitable, cheerful, upbeat, and eager to show what she's got or what she's passionate in, Solveig is regarded as eminently easy to get along with. Her passionate nature makes her extremely adept at her practice of Uskarlyc magecraft, where she is considered to be one of the fastest learners yet seen. Regarded as a pillar of the student community of her age group; her passion for the study of progenitorology and Uskarling history has won many admirers. She is also well known for her tremendous skill in all manner of tabletop games and heads the local school association for roleplaying and wargaming for her age bracket. She's one of the most avid media posters within the Privitkaya Campus and the sector at large, eagerly diving into ComNet discussions. Her augmented reality glasses help her keep track of her favoured discussions and her video series on the history of Uskarlyc magic has gained her a substantial following.

 _Arne's notes:_

She's so cheery and bubbly and beautiful. I don't think I've ever met someone with her level of enthusiasm for nearly...everything she gets involved with. But I think I really like that; it's nice to see someone so sincere all the time. It reminds me a lot of Samus, though she's less angry and more...ambitious I'd say? She's got big plans for herself. I'm hoping our mutual interest goes somewhere.

Individuals: Aelvan: Psion: Male: Omdynisch: Uskarling: Student: Alive: Illarion Aelgrad Tyrlomyr

Illarion was born to the Aelvan Weivyll Nomad fleet to Allaral and Ylvresse. Illarion quickly demonstrated a tremendous degree of skill at the utilisation of psionic force. Specialising primarily in the manipulation and channelling of energy, Illarion requested and received a transferrence to Project Outreach. Well known for his strong sense of humour and considerable charisma, Illarion is respectful and charming if shameless in his desires following the onset of adolescence. His friend circle ranges far and wide in the Privetkaya campus and beyond, and as one of the most popular pupils of his age bracket, he often takes it upon himself to greet new students. He is also regarded as a frequent poster and connoisseur of ComNet memes, keeping his fingers on the pulse of the shifting and transformations of culture.

 _Arne's Notes:_

At first I wasn't sure what to think of him besides that he's...really good looking but the more I spend time with him the more I think we'll be pretty good friends, or maybe more? He seems interested at least. And I think he's likely to make the first move...I don't get a lot of the jokes he posts on the ComNet though, but I'm just behind on online culture in general.

Individuals: Aelvan: Psion: Female: Omdynisch: Uskarling: Student: Alive: Taellarja Jelvaer Syndermin

Taellarja was born to the population of the nomadic fleet Syflewin during its visit to the Black Eye Galaxy. After her tribe elected to stay in the Galaxy, she demonstrated tremendous bio and telekinetic psionic powers that she soon wished to study further as well as broaden. Ambitious, flirtatious, crafty, and entertaining big dreams of heroism; Taellarja keeps people underestimating her by presenting herself as an unserious and often outright silly person. This, however, masks her tremendous and steely determination to show that she can be someone others can rely on to keep them safe. An experience born of her own personal trauma when a War-Spore force attacked her tribe's fleet and only the timely intervention of a number of Uskarling champions prevented further tragedy. Since then, she seeks to live up to the image set by many other champions and hopes to perhaps one day fill the void left by Gyda Skjoldr.

 _Arne's Notes:_

I wonder if it's because she doesn't want me to feel too overwhelmed about my parents' legacy that she didn't tell me that she knew my mom before her death. But I'm sure that when she gets alone with me we're probably going to have a very long talk about that subject. I just hope that well, she's...fascinating and I don't want to disappoint her...

Individuals: Scikrovik: Divergent: Male: Omdynisch: Shethoteq: Student: Alive: Loxtoqil Muehuatax Ulhyote

Loxtoqil hails from the Shethothuain Democratic Omnipragmatist Republic, having moved to the territories of the Uskarling Democratic Federative Omnipragmatist Republic with his family group five years ago. Born with a divergent predilection for understanding and operating most forms of machinery, Loxtoqil has from an early age been endlessly tinkering with and adjusting machines to his needs. Under the tutelage of Project Outreach he has already managed to demonstrate an ability to produce devices able to operate well outside of the parameters they should be able to with the materials he has as well as greatly accelerated comprehension of any device he works with. Thus earning him high esteem amongst many of his peers. Especially due to his patient explanations of his processes to help those he sees as in need of it. He seeks to one day become part of a team of researchers and developers who can tackle important problems and advance the general welfare of society.

 _Arne's Notes:_

He's definitely brilliant from what I've seen of him, but I'm not sure if he's quite decided whether we're going to be friends or not. Maybe I should talk to him about something both of us find interesting? Starship mechanics maybe? He seems like he'd be interested in that.

Individuals: Synthetics: Feminine Presenting: Techmaster: Omdynisch: Yrakt: Student: Alive: Elgramor

Elgramor is another growing synthetic, designed to help the synthetic majority of the ODOCR better connect with its organic minority. A nanite construct that has come into contact with some progenitor technology, Elgramor at first seems to be simply a large and powerful brutish mechanoid, but in truth is a highly adept shapeshifter and technology assimilator. Able to integrate most technology quickly, although struggling more with progenitor technology or devices with counter-assimilation failsafes that generally require progenitor grade modules to assimilate; Elgramor's capabilities are ever adapting and evolving. Elgramor is a somewhat serious machine and likes to focus on her tasks first before allowing herself to relax, but she is also well known for being extremely fiercely loyal. She is also known to occasionally take on less intimidating forms as a sign that she feels comfortable around someone.

 _Arne's Notes:_

I wonder what her more benign forms are like? Though I suppose she could look like nearly anything she wants to really. It's interesting that she's also able to assimilate most technology instantly though; well ahead of most non-progenitor modular systems even. Maybe I could try and help her with some limitations?

Individuals: Human: Empowered: Nonbinary: Omdynisch: Qillan: Student: Alive: Zhang Kai

Zhang was exposed to the energies of an accident involving early fuel gel designs and imbued with a natural ability to catalyse and utilise zero-point energy, allowing them to make use of tremendous amounts of energy and even distort space. Kai primarily achieves spatial distortion through producing and manipulating negative energy through their body's natural zero-point energy catalysts. They also make use of this ability to power armour suits designed especially for them, emphasising ranged ability thanks to Kai's ability to keep potential problems at a distance. This potent ability gives Kai something of a superiority complex, but they are fiercely dedicated to their comrades and often view it as their responsibility to carry their burdens due to their potency. Kai is also highly erudite and has dedicated themselves to trying to understand and master their strange abilities fully. Kai is also something of a romantic, though they prefer to establish a bond of friendship first before pursuing further.

 _Arne's Notes:_

I think I could really get along with them. They're very, interesting both to look at and to speak to so far. I'm guessing it'll be a bit of time before I can fully earn their trust, but I think that if I try, I'll be able to get in. We've already made a pretty good first impression so far...at least, I think I have.


	21. Prodigy: Delver (SA & AS)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arne and Samus have a heart to heart

_Holochat Chamber, Samus' Dorm, Night Time._

  
Samus had been waiting for this moment all day, finishing up a long and exciting conversation with Old Bird and his compatriots in the holochat chamber. "Bye, papa. See you tomorrow!" She said, smiling as she waved farewell to them.  
  
"I will count the minutes until our next meeting, little hatchling." He said, the hard-light figure of his hologram threading its fingers through her hair and playfully ruffling it, getting an excited giggle from her before she ambushed him with a hug that he returned swiftly.  
  
Isa-Hesh looked on fondly and joined in. "Ah, my darling girl. I'm so proud of you." She said, feeling another of Samus' arms wrapping around her as she pulled the holograms into her, relishing in their warmth.  
  
As she pulled away from the hug, Grey Voice simply laid a hand on her shoulder and nodded at her.  
  
"Remember, simply because you are gifted is no excuse to slack off on the new duties given to you. I expect your finest effort, Aira-Sekh." He said, only passing her a single nod of acknowledgement when Samus gave him a thumbs up.  
  
"Now, I think we have some other business to attend to, Mother Brain is expecting us shortly. Be well, Samus." War Hawk said, giving her a mimed wave goodbye as their holograms fizzled out one after the other.  
  
Sucking in a breath, Samus twisted her fingers on the console and mentally flicked through the contacts until she got to Arne's profile picture, showing him and Samus before a waterfall at Chozodia. The two were half-dressed in swim clothes with her arm around his neck and her fingers in a victory position while he looked towards the camera drone with a rare earnest grin from him. She knew he would be available from her premonitions, and signalled her readiness to initiate contact, making a ping across spacetime all the way into another galaxy.  
  
Immediately Arne's form fizzled into being, wearing a simple short-sleeved shirt and shorts, the print of a starship on the chest of his red blouse while his blue pants ruffled a bit with his movements. She herself wore similar clothes; though she went with orange and blue and a rabbit print, and both had slipped off their footwear for the indoors. They looked somewhat normal in all honesty.  
  
Arne's expression lit up like the dawning sun, and hers widened in return as he eagerly sat himself down in the bed the second she patted a spot next to him.  
  
"Hey there, Valkyr." He said, the pet name for her making her flush just a bit before she tweaked his nose and got a laugh out of him.  
  
"Oh hush, snowboy." She said back to him, his own pale skin starting to flush in return as he felt the bed she was on and looked back at her.  
  
"Bedroom, huh?" He said, laying back onto it briefly and then pushing himself back up.  
  
"Well, I thought it should feel kind of...intimate, you know?" She said, smirking at him as he nodded back.  
  
"Mhrm, I get that. It's pretty nice too. I'm guessing it's based off yours?" He said, taking only a second to look around before looking back at her.  
  
"Yep! Next time I want you to show me yours." She grinned and gave him a wink and thumbs up.  
  
"Yeah, definitely. I've been trying to set up my workspace in a way that seems familiar to me." He said before taking a look at some of the holoposters she set up and rubbing his smooth chin briefly while he studied it.  
  
"Really fond of Yrimoch aren't you?" He said, eyeing the adventure hero's poster, her armoured figure leaping down into the face of danger and the unknown with an eager energy—white and red armour bold and bright against the backdrop of alien vistas.  
  
"Yeah! Why wouldn't I be? Ian showed me some of her movies, and I just can't stop watching them!" Samus said with a happy grin while Arne gave her a warm, fond look and shifted his legs a bit, flicking some of his hair away from his face as he thought to himself.  
  
"Ian Malkovich, right? Is he cute?" Arne asked, smirking at the happy nod gave to him as she leaned in a bit closer and gave him a daring look into his eyes.  
  
"What about that Solveig girl you messaged me about hrm?" She asked, cackling at the thumbs up that Arne gave her and clapping a bit.  
  
"Honestly so many people here are just...gorgeous you know? I want to get to know all of them as soon as I can and ugh...sometimes I don't even know where to start!" She said, sighing and bringing an arm around him, nestling into the crook of his arm and holding him tight. She academically knew he wasn't actually there, that this was all just a hard-light projection, but it was the next best thing for both of them. She could still feel his empathic warmth, his body heat, and the contours of his skin, and he could feel hers.  
  
"Yeah, I get that too. There's just a lot of really...beautiful and interesting people. I'm just a bit nervous with speaking to a lot of them and, gods I wish I was better at saying hello." Arne said with an exhalation, holding her close to him and popping some of his knuckles on his other hand while she wriggled her toes and hummed a little tune.  
  
They remained like that for a little while longer, just relaxing with each other's company and saying nothing. After a year of being together they weren't quite in the honeymoon phase anymore. They had some arguments here and there, some a bit heated, but they still dearly loved the time they had with each other. It made them feel much warmer, safer, wanted and loved. To know that they weren't the only people who had experiences like themselves and to be able to commiserate about their rather particular life experiences.  
  
Then Samus spoke. "What was it like, seeing how everyone looked up to your parents?" She asked, tilting her head upward and resting her chin on his shoulder as her hair, freed from its pony-tail, shifted a bit with her movements, intent blue eyes studying him for possible reactions. She made a sweet little smile and received a small kiss on her lips in return before he gave her some distance and thought.  
  
"It's honestly heart-aching. I wish I knew them better than just as first memories and old writings left behind. Seeing how everyone looked up to them reminds me of how little I really know them. And I feel like." He sighed and looked forward. "I feel like I'm never really going to be who they wanted me to be. Am I really Arne Skjoldr, or am I Sarxyl Avar? I spent only three years as one, but ten as the other." He said before Samus shooshed him with a finger to his lips.  
  
"Arne don't talk about yourself like that. You're both your sets of parents' son, just like I'm both my sets of parents' daughter." She said, grinning a bit and smooching him on the cheek, getting one in return before she frowned a bit as she mused on her response. "But on the not really knowing the people who gave birth to us, I've gotten a lot of that too lately. Everyone knows my parents as the people who took out the Inferno Pack. Dragonslayers, Scourge breakers..." She said with a bit of melancholy as she thought of what she really knew of the Arans.  
  
"But I was three when they died. I only learned how to ride a bicycle six months before. And I know mama and papa had big expectations for me." She said as she got out an heirloom salvaged from K-2L, showing their high hopes for their daughter. A video-log drive containing their rehearsed messages of congratulation for every milestone they expected or hoped their daughter to take. A new parent thing done as they went through the rush of emotions that accompanied the confirmation of Virginia's pregnancy.  
  
"They wanted me to be a scientist, you know?" She said, wiping away a single tear as Arne patted her on the shoulder and kissed away the flash of sadness that she felt, though she could see that he was crying himself.  
  
"Mom and dad wanted me to go into civics and social work. Help people without having to spend my life at war. I guess that ship's left the dock." Arne said, blinking away a few of his tears and giving a wry smile.  
  
"Really? Clan Champion Gyda Astridsdottir Skjoldr wanted her son to be a social worker?" She said with a little giggle. "That's just so...unexpected for that kind of lineage." She smirked and sniffled.  
  
"Heh, I guess after seeing so much violence, they didn't want me to have to be part of it. They wanted to retire soon too, raise the other kids they wanted to have and I somewhere quiet." He said, thinking wistfully about what could have been before shaking his head. What had come to pass had already happened, he shouldn't dwell on it for too long.  
  
"Mama and Papa wanted me to be the first of five kids for my set. But they always said that I was a smart girl. And here I am, working on spaceship and power suit designs...heheh." She said, conjuring a hologram of her latest design that caught Arne's attention as his eyes widened and head tilted.  
  
"Is that a mech?" He asked, taking a close look at the shape before him, large, powerful, but clearly agile and fast-moving. It made him think of a humanisation of a Chozo statue, albeit made of metal instead of stone. The way that the wearer was supposed to fit into it also caught his eye in particular, it'd be a pretty decently large mech if his read of the proportions were correct.  
  
"Yeah. I thought it'd be a fun thing to do to pass the time. Something that might be handy in fights with bigger opponents." She said, shrugging a bit as he studied the schematics.  
  
"Can I have a copy of this? Over a secure line of course...I'd be uh...interested in helping you with this." He said with a smile. The thought of working on another collaborative engineering project with her made the both of them feel quite warm inside.  
  
"Of course!" She grinned, patting him on the back as he chuckled. This might be a fun thing to do on their offtime, though they'd likely need to do a few expeditions to get the necessary materials.  
  
"So how was your day Arne?" Samus asked the white-haired boy looking back at her through the crystal clear hologram. He scratched the back of his head as he thought and gave a small, slightly nervous laugh that made him feel as if he was actually there in the room, sitting next to her as his attention was shifted from their mutual interest in engineering.  
  
"Well, having to say goodbye to my parents was pretty awful. But I think I've made quite a few friends at least." He said, the hard-light hologram reaching to her hair and stroking it, perfectly mimicking the sensation of his actual skin on her scalp as he played with it, looking towards her with a satisfied expression.  
  
"Yeah, I made a bunch too! Just so many people with interesting stories! But I think I'm already starting to miss my family. People here don't pick up on a lot of the same signals. They don't act as understanding." She said, frowning and looking away from him.  
  
"And everyone just wants to talk to me about the Chozo all the time. I love to talk but..." She paused a bit and touched the hand on her head and peeled it off before lacing her fingers through his.  
  
"You don't feel like people want to talk about you, just at you, don't you?" Arne said, his stare sympathetic and kind. He knew what that was like; it was something he dealt with since the Alimbics took him in.  
  
"Yeah." She sighed as she looked down and folded her lips, swinging her legs. "And there's so many new rules and regulations. I can't wander around at night unsupervised; I can't play around with the equipment, I can't just take my ship and fly around a bit..." She pouted, getting him to lay a hand on her chin and turn her face towards him.  
  
"Well, here is less strict than it was under Zurvduat, so I'm liking it here quite a bit. Even if there's been some weird sights." He said, getting a look of concern from Samus. She herself had seen something unusual, but it wasn't something she felt comfortable with burdening him with the knowledge of.  
  
"Like what?"  
  
"Someone who reminds me of a figure I saw on Cylosis. The shapeshifting monster woman. I'm not sure if it's her. This would be really deep into Omdynisch territory for one thing." He said with a frown, he breathed slightly hard at the recollection and looked downright unhappy at the experience.  
  
"You've seen something too, haven't you?" He said, picking up on the signals of what she was thinking of but didn't want to say.  
  
"I...there's been something that looks like...Pirate tech here. Scurrying away when it thinks people can't notice. Everyone is swearing its just some prank." She said, but he could tell she didn't quite believe that. Most people weren't depraved enough to try and joke about the Confederacy of Dismor. Certainly no one she hoped would be allowed to continue being at this facility without being put into a remedial program.  
  
"I see. Maybe they're related? Mom kept on thinking that the attackers on Cylosis were Federation in origin but..." He said before Samus spoke up.  
  
"Arne they can't be. I've told you this a thousand times. The Federation would never do something so horrible! Even to someone they thought was a terrorist like Gyda...and I'm sure that enough of them knew that Gyda was a good person to never do that kind of...genocide." She said, snapping a bit and making Arne shirk slightly away from her before nodding in response.  
  
"I understand, but maybe there's a Pirate connection? That kind of biological modification...it might be their work." He said as she narrowed her eyes and nodded.  
  
"Then we'll kill them." She said with a cold intensity that almost spooked him, a hard gulp coming from the young Cylosian. He understood the lust for revenge; he felt it too; the urge to right a terrible wrong. It was something they both shared. But when she flipped from sweet to chilling it seemed like flicking a switch, just like when either of them had their...episodes.  
  
"I look forward to it." He said in agreement as she gave him a mischievous grin.  
  
"Well, uh. I've been trying to work on being a bit more assertive and well..." He said, clearly trying to cheer her up as he worked up the courage to say something, Samus' eyebrows just about reaching into orbit as a grin began to crack on her face. Oooh this was going to be exciting, she could just feel the anticipation and tension building in the atmosphere.  
  
"There's this new movie, at this really nice complex with a great arcade. So I was thinking...maybe we could take our friends and go on a date...like a group date? Would that be something you'd like to do?" Arne said, chuckling slightly nervously at the thought, getting a little giggle out of Samus in return.  
  
"I'd like that a lot." She said as she laid her hands on his chest and pushed him onto the bed.  
  
"Now...I want t-" She said with an eager look as Arne bit his lower lip. But the two would never quite get the chance they were looking for as the door to the holochamber opened on both of their ends as Ian blearily walked in, and Solveig poked her head inside; the two manifesting on either's respective ends as additions to the holo-communique.  
  
"Samus where is my sunglass ca-" Ian stopped as he looked at the scene and lowered his sunglasses...which he wore at night...in pyjamas, okay...to stare at Arne and Samus.  
  
Then he looked at Solveig who had a tablet in her hand and a set of pink pyjamas loosely covering her body and gave her a finger pistol and a wink while she waved cheerfully at him.  
  
"Sorry, sorry, am I interrupting something?" She said.

"Oh well..." Samus said with a flush, her attentions going over to Solveig and liking what she saw. Solveig noticed the attention given to her and brushed a bit of hair away from her face and offering a grin as she decided that this girl was someone she very much wouldn't mind the scrutiny of. An assessment that Samus mirrored, she was really quite pretty, and the young hatchling couldn't help but think of how many interesting stories she might have to tell. And of course, her face seemed to be ever so soft, much like Arne and Ian's.  
  
Arne went a bit more beet red than Samus did at their moment being interrupted, being the shyer of the pair. Arne flashed a small smile and offered a wave to both of the newcomers, his eyes quickly scanning over Ian and feeling just a bit flushed as he realised that the newcomer was well, quite appealing to his eyes. And the way he studied him in return made Arne feel rather desired in a way that he didn't mind at all? It was validating to be given that sort of wink and thumbs up, though Ian's gaze remained respectful and avoided lingering.  
  
Solveig and Ian studied each other of course, almost circling around each other as they tried to gauge the other before deciding that getting to know each other would be a valuable use of their time. Certainly worth a few repeat usages if the confident smiles they traded to each other was any indication.  
  
"Ian." He said, getting Solveig's name in response. Solveig adjusted her glasses, and Ian made sure that she could get a good look at his eyes as he offered her his best charming smile. Whether or not he was as suave as he thought he was, he did get her to giggle a bit as she approached him and received a hand to shake. A gesture she returned enthusiastically, almost bouncing with her arm. Compliments were passed about each other's hair in short order, and a few pleasantries were exchanged.  
  
At the same time, Arne decided to take the time to stroke Samus' hair, feeling her through the hard light projection's feedback and deciding he quite liked the feeling. Samus let out a little purr at the sensation, nuzzling into his hand while she snuggled a bit around him and whispered to him about how cute she found the situation. Something that Arne agreed pretty quickly with. It was indeed, quite endearing to watch their two new friends get a feel for each other, and the two laughed when Ian bemusedly tried to mime Solveig's Grendakal salute when offered it.  
  
Now that everyone's attentions were elsewhere, Samus decided to stir just a little bit of chaos. Perhaps to get at them while they were distracted and wouldn't be trying to fluster her. "Yes, you were interrupting something. Unless your intention was to join?" Samus asked, getting Ian to choke on his spittle and Solveig to go wholly red and breathe heavily. Ah, that was her intention, to get them both making amusing reactions. Vindicated by her efforts, she gave Arne a smooch before she let out an impish giggle and flipped herself upright into a seated position on the bed and then standing up.  
  
"Why didn't you tell me Arne and his friends were this cute? Consider me very...interested in seeing how your open thing works." He said as Arne stood himself up and ran a hand through his hair, looking back at Ian as he approached him and sized him up.  
  
Arne found himself to be a bit taller than the Slavic boy who had to prop himself just slightly upwards to meet his white-haired counterpart. Definitely easy on the eyes, and both could tell that the other kept themselves in great shape, Ian whistling at the sight of Arne's definition. Skjoldr was honed like a well-sharpened sword and kept his body in virtually immaculate condition. Ian, for his part, kept himself to military standards of fitness, and it showed in a way that caught Arne's eye.  
  
Ian for a moment considered the overall layout of Arne's face, just as he was studying his. Cute, boyish, just a touch androgynous but better for it. An amusing display that got him to smirk as he was offered a hand that he shook quite firmly in return. The gesture wasn't one hundred per cent familiar to him, but he was able to get the gist of it in a hurry—the touch leaving Arne wanting a bit more.  
  
Samus sized up Solveig more closely herself. She was definitely the taller of the two, to Solveig's mild annoyance as she was used to being taller than most girls. Solveig barely had to look to notice that Samus was quite muscular, her body leanly defined for speed more than power. It was almost enough to make her feel self-conscious, but on the other hand, she wasn't so bad herself in that department, thanks to her mother's training and gene-augs.  
  
Samus kept her hair in a shorter cut, more boyish, while Solveig seemed to regard the notion of cutting her voluminous hair as heresy. Both wondered for a moment, what the other's hair would feel like. Solveig just giggled a bit, getting a similar response from Samus as they shared a brief curtsy towards each other that got the two laughing out loud shortly afterwards.  
  
"Ah, I wish you two were actually here with us in person." Solveig said with a sigh as she straightened her clothes and clasped her hands together. The hard light holochat was virtually the same thing as being in person for most intents and purposes, but knowing that they weren't physically there brought a vague hollowness to it. Not enough to ruin the experience, but enough to leave her wanting more.  
  
"Honestly? Same." Ian said, stretching a bit and getting another look at Solveig and offering a hand towards her hair, though he only proceeded when she nodded. While he knew that this was a projection, every detail felt perfectly real to his fingers, only his mind's eye could fully perceive the imperfections. The psionic details that were simply being telecasted rather than actually being there.  
  
"Well, now that we're all here. What do you want to do?" Samus asked, pulling some snacks out of her pocket and taking a little bite from them, chewing on the gummies and bouncing a bit on her feet.  
  
"I mean, I'm not tired. But it's not like we can go very far from this place." Ian said with a shrug. To be fair, with the standardised augmentations, it was easy for the average human to go for months without sleep and to subsist on just fifteen minutes worth every once in a while. Sleep was more often than not just a means of destressing or passing away the quieter hours now, and Ian usually liked to keep busy during the night hours. Especially since the Nocturnal crowd was pretty fun to be with, as was evidenced by this conversation.  
  
"Aw true..." Solveig groaned. She looked at the room, it was decently large, but the projectors would only allow herself and Arne to roam so far around. She wanted to see more, but she could only really go where projectors were able to broadcast, and as a foreigner, her projection privileges were somewhat limited.  
  
Magnasdottir ruminated on that trying to weave a spell to see how far she could actually go. But as she followed the pathways of her arcane energies, she noticed that the data flow of the device wasn't going to all the usual directions. Which must mean that it was being altered in some way...Who would want to alter who gets to view the logs, ah of course! She made a small "Ahah!" her eyes briefly flicking to Arne and making a little knowing smirk.  
  
He must have tampered somewhat with the machine. "Hee, clever boy aren't you Arne?" She said with a beaming grin while Arne flushed.  
  
"I just...didn't want people to listen in on stuff that's supposed to be private, that's all." He said humbly as if he hadn't trivially worked his way around numerous layers of cybersecurity even without the aid of his armour.  
  
"Don't worry, I'm not going to tell." Ian said with a finger pressed to his lips.  
  
"Ahem, so as I said. What do you all want to do?" Samus asked, clearing her throat, this was rather fun...just getting to know each other, but she didn't want to amble too much. She felt that there was more to do, things that were important and needed her attention. But she couldn't quite put her foot down on just what it was.  
  
It was frustrating to be so underveloped in her sorcerous and psychic gifts, especially when so many of her friends were allowed to go hogwild with them while the Chozo told her she would need to wait for that phase of training. A sore spot like sandpaper rubbing against the worst places, and one that occasionally drew her choler out.  
  
Arne, and indeed just about everyone sensed that annoyance with not knowing just what it was that she sensed coming that required this meeting beyond a simple time to catch up. A simmering dull red sensation of annoyance mingled with the mist of uncertainty curling from her mind. Best to not keep her waiting then.  
  
"Well, there are ways to kinda, have fun without leaving here?" Arne said, shifting his trousers slightly for comfort and taking a look at some of Samus' mementoes strewn about the holographic recreation of her room. He smiled softly, he always found her life so interesting. He loved to learn more about her passions, and feathered his fingers around one of the model mock-ups of a starship idea she had roiling around in her head. He almost wished he could disassemble it to see how she put it together, and almost sounded joyous when he realised it was flight-capable.  
  
"When did you build this Samus? I don't remember you having something like this before" He asked, getting Solveig and Ian's attentions as well as hers almost immediately when he got it to fly with a psycho-tactile command.  
  
"Oh, I put it together after breakfast. I was a bit bored, so I decided to try out some of the worskhops. I wish they had some better materials, but I think it worked out great!" She said with a proud grin while Ian let out a whistle.  
  
"Dang, I thought you were just metalworking for the hell of it. That thing actually functions?" Ian asked, Samus nodding eagerly in response.  
  
"Oooh, so you like to mess around with machines too? Arne here was busy with some other side-projects too!" Solveig said, pushing Arne slightly forward towards Samus as her eyes lit up with curiosity and he chuckled a bit.  
  
"Oh I was just kind of trying to work on a new helmet design. My current one is well...kind of creepy. You know how you've got a few different helmet designs?" He said, taking a moment to conjure up a replica of the helmet.  
  
"I was just thinking if I'm supposed to be a knight, why not look more the part?" He said, showing off the new helm. Rather than the unflinching cyclopean gaze of his standard helmet, it had a simple gently upward sloped V-shaped visor atop a shield-shaped mouthguard, turning the crest into a pair of antennae at the side and a small V-shaped antenna at the forehead above the visor.  
  
"It's part of some aesthetic concepts I had. To make people more comfortable around me and well...announce that I'm Arne, not just the Neophyte or Primoris." He said smiling as Samus took the replica in her hands and lit up with fascination.  
  
"Oooh, I also had some concepts for a way to keep my favoured looks and colour schemes with upgrades." She said, grinning a bit back at him as he chuckled in response.  
  
"Without having to just rely on my collection of spare suits." She smirked.  
  
"Hah, yeah I guess it is kind of a shame to keep on changing colours when we designed them to look a certain way." Arne laughed a bit before something in the corner of his eye caught his attention. Something moving fast that Solveig also noticed, an accusing finger stretching from her hand.  
  
"Is that supposed to be there?" Solveig asked as she looked at the insectile thing with a look of displeasure, getting less than great vibes from it.  
  
Samus snapped her head into the direction of the machine and narrowed her eyes. She vaulted back and caught the machine as it tried to outrace her. It managed to skitter faster than its own sound, but she was much faster still, and she moved like a whip to snatch it between her fingers and quickly studied it with her eyes.  
  
She identified a circuit about to transmit a self destruct signal and squeezed her fingers in just the right way to pop its barrier, and squeeze the self-destruct initiator mid-transmission. The signal flickered against the superhuman skin of her index finger and thumb before fizzling out entirely, a sigh of relief coming from her as she peeled off its legs as soon as she felt it trying to stab the incredibly sharp blades into her, grunting a bit and shaking a hand in annoyance before disabling it.  
  
"There...got you!" She said triumphantly.

"Nice work...what can you see?" Arne asked as Samus laid the machine out on a table she had conjured up and squinted at its mechanics and inner workings. Clever minds made this machine with very sophisticated tools, but a cursory examination showed that the design was one for mass production. Her eyes focused onto even microscopic details and saw standardised parts, non-custom fittings, the lack of any sign of minor alterations characteristic of having been tinkered with. She guessed that it was self-replicating after having a closer look, seeing it trying to pick off any usable matter with its jaws and process it into new "tissue". Something it kept on doing until she had hard-light fields restrain its movements.  
  
But what solidified her decision was noticing that, when she focused the energies of her scan visor through her eyes, she could detect leftover traces of serial numbers. Her armours were a part of her, pieces of her soul. Just as nothing could permanently destroy them while her inviolable soul continued to exist; some of their abilities were always available. One of them was scanning, and the wiry cords of quasi-mystical energy of her armour pulled the information directly into her brain in the period of a single thought.  
  
The answer came to her almost as a shock, her face scowling in disgust at the truth. Then that disgust turned to anger. She breathed hard for a moment, clenching her hand rapidly before Arne put a hand on her shoulder; sensing her anguish. The memories of fire started to smoulder and crackle in her mind, and she had to fight down a snarl that was trying to form itself on her lips. She quenched her fury briefly with cold determination, but the maelstrom inside of her stirred at ever greater speeds with violent ideation. It refused to be stilled, hormones and trauma conspiring together to start a raging storm inside of her heart.  
  
"It can't be made by a student." She said with anger making her voice choke as she began to quiver, looking at Ian and nodding sagely at her conclusion. Ian tilted his head briefly and adjusted his shades as he tried to think for a bit until he decided to nod along. He was nervous, sensing the maelstrom inside of her heart start to whip into a vicious fury. She was twitching.  
  
"Okay, but how do you figure Sam?" He said. He was trying to hide the slight quail in his voice and the quake in his legs. She was immensely powerful, a protozoan star of budding potential. He had so far only really seen her at her best; when she was happy or excited. The animalistic expression on her face was terrifying; like staring into the face of an oncoming tidal wave.  
  
"Ian, are you sure she's going to be okay?" Solveig said, worry in her voice as she felt the boiling cauldron of fury building inside of the blonde. The causeways of destiny quaked at the potential outcomes of her oncoming outburst. Her voice was choking as she tried to formulate a coherent response to the fairly asked question of her.  
  
"Samus, what's wrong?" Arne asked, knowing that anger inside of her quite well. He could feel the agonised fury that sought release inside of her. And that was something that worried him because he too felt his own beast inside scratching and clawing for release.  
  
"These components are mass-produced. Serialised components even." She said, her voice furious as her efforts to quench the anger began to break down. "And the technology is definitely space pirate." She said with clear contempt in that phrase. She almost wanted to smash the thing in her hands; she almost did, in fact. She had to stop herself at the last moment from destroying the evidence and instead had the holochamber make something breakable and fragile.  
  
She needed to feel something come apart in her hands and thought of something that would feel good to destroy. It couldn't just be hard-light, it had to be real...and the nanites in the chamber got to work on fulfilling her request. She saw a grey rectangular mass form next to her and slammed her fist through the ferocrete block that it had generated with a casual swat as she let out a frustrated cry of monomaniacally focused rage. The combination of mineral and metal was no match for her strength or her skin, nanotube fibres and metallic rebar augmenting the precision-engineered mineral crystals smashing apart against superhuman cell structures without even scratching them. A block that could have shrugged off re-entry and impact shattered into pieces so energetic that Ian had to throw up a telekinetic barrier surrounding her to stop them from moving around.  
  
It wasn't enough. She needed more. A hard-light training drone designed to take the abuse of the students with a heavy, padded sports player like body fizzled into being as if to respond to her call. The air split with a thunderclap, and she threw a hammer fist so violent that the hard-light image of the holochamber flickered before simulating the machine just about exploding. More and more objects were given to her, all of them breaking in a hurry as Ian and Solveig backed off with concern.  
  
She briefly caught sight of the others gathering within the chamber, seeing her rearranging a conjured cliff with her fists and making quite the furor. She didn't care until she had smashed the whole thing to pieces, about to relieve her stress against something else until Arne snuck in and hugged her. She almost swung around to throw her fist into his face, her hand lashing out by sheer reflex until Arne brought his own to catch it by his palm; the holochamber flickering his image a bit as it tried to calculate the immense force of what happened.  
  
She had almost hit _Arne_.  
  
"...Samus?" He asked. He was sympathetic; he always was, just like she always was for him. They understood each other, knew the others' anguish all too well. And she had almost hit him out of the blind rage of a temper tantrum when she couldn't maintain her calm any further.  
  
"I'm...sorry." She said, shame in her voice as she pulled away from the offered hug. She didn't feel like she had earned it, not after an outburst like that. What good was she if she couldn't control herself around one of the people closest to her? Her armour manifested around herself, zero suit and then plating encasing her body after a fade-in of orange light as she hugged her knees to her chest.  
  
She wanted to shut out the outside world, to sink into this shell and hide her shame. Her face looked out at the world through the visor, and she pulled up the hood of her Phantom suit after activating the upgrade to provide one more layer of anonymity. Arne's attempt at hugging her was foiled by her activating the incorporeality systems, causing him to pass right through and fall onto the ground before he picked himself up and shook his head.  
  
"Samus..." He said with soft concern.  
  
"I don't deserve the help after an outburst like that..." She said glumly before Ian stepped in and sat down next to her ghostly form.  
  
"Hey, look. What you went through...look God knows what would happen if I lost my family. But hey, if there is someone letting pirate drones here run wild, can't think of many places better equipped to stop them than here right?" Ian said with his best attempt at a reassuring smile.  
  
"You don't understand...people here could die and it would be my fault if I couldn't keep them safe. They're...they're monsters Ian, they're going to pull this place apart looking for what they want then..." She was starting to wander back into that awful place. The very idea of the soldiers and agents of the Confederacy of Dismor in a place she thought was safe was enough to make her sink into some of the worst memories of her life.  
  
Raw, undiluted violence at every turn, everyone she knew dying. Torn apart, eaten, crying for help only for no one to come. Powerless, unable to do anything for the damned and the doomed. Useless.  
  
So much blood, so much noise, so much fear all around her. And not a single thing she could do could help any of them. She felt herself crying, sobbing as she tried to shut out the screams of the dead that still haunted her to this day.  
  
She no longer heard anything else, but she clutched tightly at the medallion that Old Bird had given her, conjuring it into existence and holding it tight until she saw an astral projection of Re-Sekh's form before her. At once, everything seemed to melt away, leaving the two of them in a comforting void as the mirage like visions of terror disappeared.  
  
"Aira, child, what troubles you my golden sweet?" He said with the gentlest of voices, offering a gauntleted hand while his eyes stared out of his eyepieces with warm light and fatherly love. The sensation that nothing could go wrong in his presence helped to ease her pain and made everything feel like it was falling back into place. She breathed, and cleared her sight and mind before looking back at her father.  
  
"Papa...I'm sorry...I, I lost control, and I'm so worried about my new friends here..." She said; doubt wasn't usually something she succumbed to. Her mind was armoured in confidence just as surely as the Mek'tesh suit armoured her body. It was something she associated more with Arne, and rarely did she ever feel the need to confront it head-on.  
  
"You fear the forces that destroyed your first family have found you. It is understandable that this concerns you, but does that not mean that you are where you are needed?" He said, trying to get her attention with his statements of prophecy. Samus flicked her attention to the million year ancient as he conjured a visualisation of the causeways of destiny with his other hand. Threads and cables of possibilities winding through time, a handful occasionally changing in the past, a few futures withering as soon as they were observed, and the pulses of choice going down one cord or the other.  
  
"What do you mean papa?" She said with a slight sniffle at the end, unsure of herself and doubting her ability to handle what she could feel was coming in her own perception of destiny. Fiery pain and bruised egos started to twist and wrap the destinies of so many down certain paths that lead to great suffering. A coil she vaguely recognised burned particularly bright, and it made her almost recoil at the sight of that green thread before she stilled herself.  
  
"Someone will have to put a stop to this. You and Arne are stronger than you believe yourselves to be. I am sure that you will be able to handle this, Samus. You've always given me so many reasons to have such great confidence in you." He said, laying his hand upon her and dismissing the vision of the paths of destiny. She gulped a bit and tried to hide her shame at allowing fear to rear itself in her head, but she took one look at him and knew he had no such disappointment in her.  
  
"We let you venture far from our care because we knew you could handle yourself and the freedom you desired. Were you not ready, we would have sought more controlled environments. Yet every time I look at you; I see a growing woman who is ready for anything in the stars." He said with continued gentle affection that made Samus feel so much prouder about herself, beaming at his astral form as they spoke.  
  
"I almost hurt Arne...and I scared everyone with my outbursts though. How can I be ready when I can't even control myself?" She asked, her curiosity leading her to fixate on the question.  
  
"But you can, my darling hatchling. Do not try to reject your anger and hurt. Channel it constructively. Forge it into purpose and direction. Your cry for justice is not wrong. You need only turn that cry into a purposeful manifesto." He advised, chirping positively beneath his helm and getting a nod out of the young blonde.  
  
"I...yes I think I can do that." She said.  
  
"Now, I think you have people waiting on what you have to say. Tend to their needs, take care of yourself, and help those you can. No matter how evil and cruel your foes may seem, you will always have those who look out for you; and in the end, it is because you fight for their compassion rather than your own malice that you will prove the stronger." He said with the wisdom of the ancients, each word making her feel more sure of herself, readier to face the danger.  
  
"I can do it...I have to try." She said, steeling herself.  
  
"There is goodness in everyone Samus, your task is to help change the world so that this goodness can flourish rather than be punished. It is living amidst rules that punish kindness and reward cruelties that makes monsters of people. Seek your justice, but remember that you must also bring this justice for others." He said, pausing to wait for her to add her own bit.  
  
"Until all live free." She completed the phrase for him, beaming at him, brushing away tears from her mental form's face.  
  
"Wise beyond your years as ever, my sweet. Now go, do what you must." He said, trading an astral hug goodbye with her as they held each other tight before giving a longing look towards each other as they parted. She waved goodbye and god a nod in return as the world began to fade back into being, time resuming its flow and her eyes opening again. Not even a second had passed, and she found Arne kneeling in front of her with concern, Solveig right besides him and Ian staring at her with worry.

She dismissed her armoursuit once she had pulled herself back from the brink of a panic attack and flopped onto her backside, letting out a grunt of relief as she did so. The tension was almost slipping off of her like a cape she had unclasped. Her body was seeming almost tangibly to cool down as the stress drifted away. She felt better, at least, not perfect, but better. And that was good enough for now.  
  
Samus, are you alright? You kinda had a bit of a moment there." Ian's voice was full of genuine concern, but it was Arne that she hugged first as soon as she let her suit dissipate. The two shared that moment briefly before he gave her the space she needed and allowed her to share a hug with Solveig and Ian; right before he brought them all into the same hug together.  
  
"I'm so sorry for lashing out. I just...I lost control, and I'm sorry." Samus said, looking down and sighing sadly as she pulled from the embrace, turning her eyes towards the group for forgiveness.  
  
Forgiveness they granted her quickly as Arne gave her a thumbs up, Ian smirked, and Solveig beamed. That made her feel a lot better about herself, almost glowing inside really. She sighed softly and hummed gently to herself. Then she noticed some of the others also decided to intrude in to get a better look at what was going on.  
  
"I...I'm sorry I just had a bit of a moment." Samus said, relaxing a bit and stretching out her legs to help unwind some of the last tension in her musculature. She exhaled, focused on her breathing, and let all her worries flow with the puff of air that escaped her lips. She opened her eyes and stood up, offering a hug to the three who had gathered before her. The hug lasted only a brief while, but Solveig, Arne, and Ian were only too happy to return it.  
  
They shared their warmth, but she knew that others needed her attention too. Kreatz was the first to speak up, bold as ever.  
  
"Hey, goldie, you okay there? It sounded like you were wrestling some Viragils or something." He said, getting a quick look of unfamiliarity from Arne and Solveig.  
  
"...Right, intergalactic holocall. You probably don't know what those are." He said with a sigh and a shake of his head. He seemed sympathetic, however, worried for Samus' health and safety, though not taking his eyes too far away from Arne and Solveig. He was clearly demonstrating more than a bit of interest in the pair before refocusing himself on his new friend.  
  
"It's alright! I could figure out it meant something dangerous pretty easily." Solveig said with a cheery grin before she returned to patting Samus on the shoulder.  
  
Yramil had thrown on some simple pyjamas with runic prints on them, placing her hands into her pockets. Yramil looked at the situation in front of her, and then gave a nod of understanding.  
  
"Guessing you found out where that drone really came from huh?" Yramil said, always seeming to know what to expect. That made Samus trust her, someone she could rely on even without the wisdom of the ancients behind her.  
  
"Dismorin..." Samus said in a low voice, almost a whisper as Montauk hardened his expression. The weight of that word was heavy, and just mentioning the Space Pirates by their official name seemed to darken the atmosphere and drain a little bit of the colour out of everything. Everyone had heard the stories.  
  
"Not sure what they'd want with a place like this. But it can't be for anything good. We should probably tell Adam as soon as we can. He might know what to do." Montauk said, brushing a finger against his lips as he lowered his shoulders. It seemed to be the reasonable decision for him, Chozo heiress amongst them or not; there was no real reason for them to put themselves in harm's way when there were authorities in place to handle this.  
  
"And then what?" Samus asked.  
  
"This is something for Adam to handle. We're just cadets." He said with a shrug and a sigh before Samus shook her head. The vigour of her refusal almost catching him off guard before he regained his composure and braced himself for one of her lectures on what was right or not.  
  
"And what if they can't? We can't just let themselves get hurt because we didn't want to do anything about it!" Samus said, standing up to her feet and hardening her expression.  
  
"We're not going to let anyone get hurt." Sekiryu said, urging everyone to calm down just a bit, waiting for Samus to relax and let out a cool breath of air as she refocused her energies and attentions.  
  
"So do you agree with me?" Samus asked.  
  
"Yes. But we're going to need to figure out how they got here, and why they're here." They said, tapping a finger onto their lips as they had themselves a brief moment to think about it before drawing up blanks and shaking their head.  
  
"They must have someone on the inside. Probably a mimic or an infiltrator synth." Uldrasi said, tapping her fingers together as she walked around and paced, mechanical feet shuffling around.  
  
"If you send me the data maybe I could have a look at it? That way you can work on the physical side on your end? Shouldn't be too hard, honestly." Arne said, getting a nod out of Samus.  
  
"That sounds like a good idea. Thanks, Arne!" She said with a wide grin on her face.  
  
"Oooh I could use some practice with technomancy honestly. Just uh, don't delay too long! Gotta get my hours in you know?" Solveig said with a bit of a bounce to her step.  
  
"Heh, someone's a little eager." Ian chuckled.  
  
"Duh! This is exciting! I'm doing important stuff! Oooh, all this and the shapeshifter wandering around at campus. So much to do! So much to think about!" She said with a starry-eyed look of wonderment. Just about over the moon with an explosion of energy throughout her body. Her legs bouncing up and down with enthused gusto while she hopped in place. Something that continued until Arne stilled her slightly with a hand on her shoulder. An effort that quickly got an affectionate nuzzle out of her as she wrapped her arms around him.  
  
Samus smiled at the sight, glad that he was happy and already finding new potential partners, and then giggling at how he flushed red at the sensation of her arms around him. However, she got her own turn to flush red as Ian moved in to give her a similar gesture, snaking an arm around her side and pulling her towards him before giving a thumbs up.  
  
Arne took a moment to look towards Samus and smiled, with the two giving each other a longing gaze for a moment. To be able to see each other in such clarity, to be able to touch each other...all without the other actually being there felt a bit bittersweet. Yet getting to check in on each other was an elating experience, one that both were hoping to relive soon. Especially when they now had to be concerned with how the other was doing while they were apart.  
  
"Hey, don't worry. He's in great company! We'll take good care of him!" Solveig said, getting a brief glance from Arne who then gave a warm nod towards her.  
  
"Likewise, we'll look out for each other. No need to fret Arne. Though if you ever want to hit me up for a holoconvo; well; I'm down for it." He said, lowering his sunglasses and then winking at Arne while Solveig smirked at Samus and raised her eyebrows suggestively.  
  
The two progenitor turned red for a moment before Samus cleared out her throat and twirled around some of her golden locks of hair. She was trying her best to not seem awkward and for the most part, failing, but the effort was valiant for the most part.  
  
"You'll get the uh...data soon. I'll try to meditate on some answers for the rest of the night." Samus said, trying to seize control of the conversation back.  
  
"Yeah...see you soon. Be safe, please." Arne said, waving goodbye and getting a wave in return as his image winked out and the holochamber returned to its actual configuration; a sparse and empty cylinder that one's voice would echo across if spoken in.  
  
Samus looked towards Ian who patted her on the shoulder and started to walk back out of the room. "Come on Samus, best to rest a bit for now. We'll figure this all out soon." He said.  
  
"Mh, yeah I'm just hoping that we have enough time for it." Samus said with a gentle sigh as she stepped out of the chamber with everyone else and turned towards her real room.  
  
Parting from Ian for a bit and waving goodbye to him and everyone else, Samus felt a bit more alone when the door closed and she sat down on her bed. Every word she muttered to herself seemed so much clearer without the speech of anyone else. The dark room was dimly lit, but her eyes could see just fine in them, making out all the little details and trying to see if there were any imperfections in the holographic recreation she had just left.  
  
Realising that she was letting herself be distracted by minor details, she exhaled and she pulled her legs towards her hips. Reaching for her hairband and undoing it to let her hair fall to its natural length, she rested her hands on her knees and closed her eyes. She would reach for the stars in her mind's eye and clear her thoughts for answers that she could only seek in a realm beyond the physical.  
  
What did destiny have in store for her? What did she need to do next? The maelstrom of possibilities danced around the sight of her mind's eye, coiling tendrils of futures, pasts, and present cabling all around her. Her own thread touched countless other ones, something that Papa always told her meant that she had a tremendous influence on the fate of all things.  
  
It was intimidating really, it seemed like her own cable would touch on every other thread at some point and she was always scared to try and see why her and Arne's destinies mattered so much to so many. She was warned that there would be a great deal of fog obscuring much of the fates of her counterpart and herself. Uncertainties and deliberate attempts to obscure her sight, but answers would come to her as she practised and got closer to the sources of obscuring efforts. It was all just a bit overwhelming to think about, but she couldn't get lost into her own possibilities.  
  
She had to think about something else, whose cable touched that drone the most heavily? She let her mind wander a bit through the pathways of outcomes and fates and the circumstances that lead to them. The less likely ones more ephemeral and shadowy and the more certain ones more solid and real. The thin, wraith-like cord of the drone was hard to see due to being so unimportant. But it was easy to focus on without strain due to how little its existence mattered. But there was a more straining cable that touched it, one that she recognised all too well.  
  
It was a cruel and harsh cable that had brushed against her own ten years ago. Green, spiteful, wrathful. She wasn't sure of the exact nature or the depth of the connection, whether it was only brief involvement or something more sinister. But it was something she couldn't ignore, especially with the snarl his fate had with hers in her own past. The spiteful marshal whom the dragon had entrusted with his troops during the razing of her home. The old warlord and former high command hopeful.

Weavel.

* * *

 **Consolidated Logbook Entries**  
  
  
Federation Record: Prodigal Program Memo: Concerning User: Regarding the New Student  
  
I would like to inform the faculty of our program that Samus is not a prop for your personal theories regarding the Chozo nor is she a resource to be probed into for insight regarding progenitor cultures. She is a human child and orphan who has specific needs unique to her situation that we will, as is proper for our relation to her; do our utmost to meet while still ensuring her integration with society. Initial analysis suggests that she is reluctant to embrace the reputation accrued from her actions on Zoront and it is also recommended that one not make a habit of bringing up her parents or their sacrifice. Given her diagnosis with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, it is recommended that she have regular contact with a regular therapist. The smell of burning human-like tissue, the sounds of aggressive space pirate vocalisations, and sights reminiscent of the Confederate Enforcer Ridley are known traumatic triggers and it is recommended that these stimuli only be shown to her under controlled conditions with her consent.  
  
Fortunately, her Chozo caretakers seem to have taken excellent care of her over the years, and she has demonstrated a high degree of social energy even if there are a number of social skills that she needs to practice. However, she is easily bored and the degree to which she was educated by the Chozo greatly outstrips the standard for most students here; thus ensuring that she remains properly stimulated remains vital to keep her Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder in check. Further analysis to determine whether she is simply socially awkward and inexperienced with peers or is somewhere on the Autistic spectrum will need to be done before a diagnosis can be committed to.  
  
Addendum: Samus' scan systems are capable of breaching every virtually every form of security we have. Please keep files you do not want her to read to devices that are not connected to any form of external wireless network. Despite initial presumptions, she does not actually require her helmet to be manifested to make use of her scan capabilities. Always assume that she is able to read anything written on an electronic device or can manipulate most such devices she can access that lack shut-door mechanisms to seal off unwanted signals.  
  
\- Headmaster Varagyl Stemix.  
  
 _Samus' Notes:_  
Oh Old Bird told them I could do that? Ugh, I wanted them to have to figure that out on their own. And again with pushing me in front of everyone. I want to be known for helping people but...I don't want to live under a scanner. I'm hoping I get some privacy.  
  
 _Arne's Notes:_  
I find it a little concerning that they have to warn their faculty to not see Samus as a prop for their academic careers. But, they at least have people looking out for her, so it's not all bad.  
  
Omdyn Records: Educational Council Directive: Concerning User: Concerning Arne Skjoldr  
  
There are concerning signs that Arne Skjoldr suffered heavily from abuse during his time among the Alimbics compounded with his traumatic feelings of helplessness brought about by the mysterious Cylosis assault. This has resulted in Arne having a great aversion to confrontations with authority figures he reads as fatherly and continual feelings of self-doubt and intense self-criticism. While he seems to be stable for the time being, he is heavily dependent on the maintenance of healthy social relationships with key peer and caretaker figures and is considered to be at high risk of a prolonged major psychotic break if isolated from them. At once eager to please those who show him kindness but reluctant to trust the sincerity of overtures of kindness, Arne is in need of major psychological therapy to fully heal from his past.  
  
It must also be noted that Zurvduat lost custody of Arne under less than amicable circumstances and regarded him as a high-value asset, and as such the possibility of attempts to retrieve him cannot be ruled out. Physically superior to virtually all known humans with a heavily altered neurology; Arne will be a significant challenge to provide for the needs of. But it is a challenge that we are prepared to accept to fulfil his desire for our care and a chance to interact with peers. Please keep Arne's psychological profile in mind when interacting with him and be aware of his electronic warfare capabilities as well as latent esoterical powers. He had given his trust to us, and we must demonstrate that we are worthy of it. It should also go without saying that subjects on his list of trauma triggers should be broached with extreme care around him and only when he has indicated that he is ready. Do not assume that you are in a position to decide when to handle these issues for him.  
  
Addendum: While his parents and mother, in particular, have an extremely distinguished reputation that he feels strongly attached to, it is best to not hold this over him continually. Do not make him feel as though you are giving him nonstandard treatment due to his blood relations with the former Clan Champion of Grendakal, particularly not when he broaches the topics of trying to reconnect with his maternal Clan. He wishes to feel as though he has earned the right to be mentioned with his parents, not to be simply given it.  
  
\- Council Chair Lelygim Asraeni  
  
 _Samus' Notes:_  
If Zurvduat wants Arne back, he's going to have to go through me first! I'm happy to know that they're going to take care of him as best as they can at least.  
  
 _Arne's Notes:_  
Keeping an entire file on me makes me feel so strange. I'm sure they've got one on everyone, but having so many specific recommendations...Hopefully it's nothing to worry about.  
  
Technology: Communications: Holographic: Holochat Platforms  
  
Developed from hard-light holographic entertainment modules, Holochat Platforms were designed to allow for long-distance communique to be conducted as if the people on the other end were actually there. With hyperluminal transmissions ensuring the accuracy of hard-light replicas and thousands of safety systems built into them, Holochat Platforms are widely utilised throughout the known universe by most civilizations. Though originally considered for possible military applications, the extra vulnerability of hard-light to cryogenic or energy-based attack has made the idea of "hard-light warriors" one of generally dubious value to most analysts save for an emergency backup form of defence in areas with projectors. On the other hand, the technology has also found widespread usage among long-distance romantic bonds due to its ability to facilitate relation consummation. Many users also prefer to alter their holographic avatars' appearances to live out various fantasies or represent themselves in differing ways for conversation groups.  
  
 _Samus' Notes:_  
Just needed to make a few modifications to keep the school from being able to peep on our conversations. Sorry, but no eavesdropping please! Especially not when I'm trying to use the tactile functions!  
  
 _Arne's Notes:_  
The technology involved in this is pretty sophisticated for non-progenitor artifice, some inefficiencies here and there but nothing I can't fix. Hrm; I could probably salvage a suit upgrade out of one. Never was brave enough to dismantle the one in the Sleipnir.  
  
Movies: Superhero-Adventure: Franchise: Federation Origin: Stylamiera Origin: Yrimoch; Star Traveller.  
  
Yrimoch: Star Traveller is a highly successful film franchise conceived of by Lelthynmir Aeslaera and Eldranthir Staerom and produced by the Eglimranth Studio. Covering the adventures of the fictitious Lancer Yrimoch Hrelima; the series is known for its themes of discovery, defending the weak, Social Justice, and self-betterment through adventure and collaboration. Her films are typically rendered in animated format with a stylized and sleek look to them to suggest greater motion and more exaggerated emoting. Popular particularly among adolescents, the Star Traveller series has more than twelve films under its belt as well as a quartet of seasonised show programmes that have routinely earned an audience across much of Federation space. Now into its twentieth Terran year, the series seeks to expand its reach beyond Federation space somewhat more in an effort to grow the audience further while Lelthynmir and Eldranthir plan out another arc following the conclusion of the twelve film saga.  
  
 _Samus' Notes:_  
Yrimoch is the best! She's so suave and graceful and she's got the most wonderful friends! I'm hoping I can live a life like that, for real you know? I'd love to be that kind of travelling hero making all kinds of strange companions in exotic places having fantastical adventures.  
  
 _Arne's Notes:_  
The Lancer lifestyle seems to be really interesting if this is anything to go by. I could definitely see myself giving it a go...Huh, I'd probably need a special Lancer codename though. I'll have to think about it, maybe something that starts with an S?  
  
Mechanoids: Confederacy of Dismor: Non-Combatant: Infiltrator: Micromite  
  
Micromite drones are designed to carry out infiltration of facilities while having all the machinery needed to serve as their own intelligence hubs without central direction. Capable of self-replicating, copying and secretly sending out information, and multispectral cloaking, Micromites are one of the most commonly produced Space Pirate infiltration devices. While lacking in any ability to defend themselves from macroscopic aggressors, they are highly evasive and capable of moving at extreme speeds whether on land, in water, or while flying and as such can be quite vexing to catch even for those who can see them. Micromites also possess advanced multispectral scanning devices that are used to keep tabs on virtually anything that their synthetic consciousness deems to be of possible interest or relevance to their mission. And the aforementioned intelligence is sophisticated enough for them to be able to coordinate spying activities without exposing themselves via needing to receive orders.  
  
 _Samus' Notes:_  
What could the space pirates want with this place? It must be related to some project of Weavel's to build his forces back up...but this drone's hard-purged so many of its records as soon as I grabbed onto it. Ugh, I'll have to try other methods to find out the answers.  
  
 _Arne's Notes:_  
If there's one of these, there's more. And if there's any of these, there are other space pirate infiltrators in the facility. I can't make a precise estimate, but there'd probably be at least hundreds, at most low thousands given the size of the facility. Everyone there is in danger.  
  
Individuals: Confederacy of Dismor: War Criminals: Bermudan: Male: High Marshals: Inferno Pack: Weavel  
  
Demoted from the rank of Grand Marshal at the cusp of his ascension to the prestigious company of the Generalissimo grade among the War-State of Ikamaxin that serves as his home country within the Confederacy; Weavel has become notably bitter at the setback to his career that demotion to High Marshal represents. Though able to avoid execution due to his prior service record and commendable salvaging of the disastrous K-2L operation, Weavel is heavily defined by his spite and scorn and his capacity for cruelty and atrocity has increased markedly as he seeks to reclaim his old rank and put his career back on track. With the Inferno Pack's restructuring following the loss of a large portion of its core fleet at K-2L, Weavel has focused his efforts at establishing his own loyal power base in the clockwise spinwards regions of the Ventelian Galaxy and pursuing independent schemes without relying on High Command's aid.  
  
 _Samus' Notes:_  
If he's mad about being demoted he can come on and face me. Then I'll give him so much more to worry about than his career.  
  
 _Arne's Notes:_  
If he finds out Samus is still alive he's not going to stop at anything to get even...nor is she. I think she'll come out on top though.  
  
 **Consolidated Headlines and Article Excerpts**  
  
International level News: Federal: Intergalactic Enquirer: Vogl Ergutok of the Torchlight Association re-elected Chairman  
  
In the Grand Parliamentary elections of the Galactic Federation, Vogl Ergutok's Torchlight Association has managed to form a coalition government with the Federal League for Action, the Guardians of Freedom Party, the Federal Progressive Party, and the Movement for a Modern Federation. The electoral victory despite losses to more pacifistic or internalistic party blocs will represent a continued shift towards a more militaristic Federation in the face of rising aggression from the Confederacy of Dismor, the War-Spores, and the Kriken Empire among other powers as well as building tensions with numerous other polities. Most controversial amongst Vogl's policies, however, is his repeated push for the enactment of general conscription among the Federation and to increase integration of the National Militaries of the Federation's component states into overall Federal command.  
  
 _Samus' Notes:_  
I don't understand why the Federation wastes so much time and energy on staring contests with people who could be helping them when they should be focusing everything on the Space Pirates. Ugh, the people with power are so dense some times...  
  
 _Arne's Notes:_  
Mom wrote about how the Federation or other similar governments would often consider her movement more of a threat than local Space Pirate concentrations because they more directly threatened their power structures. I hope she's not right in this case.  
  
National level News; Federal: Minute Report: Samus Eabha Aran returns to Federation Space  
  
The mysterious saviour of the lost brigade has been revealed to be none other than the only daughter of Rodney and Virginia Aran; Samus. Presumed deceased, Samus has turned out to be more than just alive and well; but also seems to be in possession of Chozo enhanced physiology and technology. While the capabilities and limitations of these gifts remains a mystery, and she has so far shied away from interview attempts, Samus' return to Federation space has already stirred significant speculation as to the course of her upbringing away from Federal territory. Based on the opinions of the experts we have asked, we have come to build a profile of what to expect of her even as she's registered into the privacy of the Prodigal Programs. What all of them agree on though is that what we have seen is going to be the prelude for even more in the future.  
  
 _Samus' Notes:_  
By the revered spirits...I really hope this isn't going to be a constant thing. Getting the camera drones out of my face was enough of a problem already. I'd...kind of like people not knowing what I look like beneath my helmet, so I can relax some times without everyone bothering me. Or at least, just...hang out with them as me, not whoever they imagine is under my suit.  
  
 _Arne's Notes:_  
I find it weird how their reports kind of overlook my presence as much as possible, but I guess it's only fair. I'm hoping though that they don't push her too hard, she needs her space and a lot of news agencies seem to believe the second your name is widely known you don't get to have any.  
  
International level News: Omdyn: Lector Popularum: Kriken Border Incidents on the Rise  
  
Kriken activity in neighbouring space between the Omdyn and the Empire have been increasing dramatically with the delegation of Archprince Trace to the Elemria Region in the Antennae Galaxy. Though still a minor by the laws of the Kriken Empire, Trace is regarded as extremely vicious and already is in possession of a lengthy record as a war criminal. Trace is believed to be seeking favour from his father; Emperor Kharve; to distinguish himself over his other siblings in the eternal conflict to rise to the top of the pecking order in the Imperial Family. Despite his extremely young age, Trace's command is surprisingly effective and exceedingly aggressive, seeking to escalate numerous border disputes into increasingly deadly raids and skirmishes. The increased Kriken threat has prompted a response of significantly increased military presence and militia readiness in the disputed region.  
  
 _Samus' Notes:_  
I don't know as much about the Krikens as I should, but from what I do know...they're as bad as the Space Pirates, and this Trace is in the same Galaxy Arne is. I'm hoping he'll be safe. Mama and Papa, Old Bird, August Wing and all said a lot about how horrible the Kriken Military was, and how rotten the Imperial Family is to the core.  
  
 _Arne's Notes:_  
Mom and Dad wrote a lot about the Krikens and Elmorni mentioned something about them being one of the great mistakes of the Order. I think they're going to do something very dangerous soon, I've got this...feeling in the Distant Sight, that something bad is coming.  
  
National level News: Omdyn: Universal Sophont: Arne Eriksen Skjoldr found alive  
  
Arne Eriksen Skjoldr of Clan Grendakal; son of Gyda and Erik Skjoldr has; to the surprise of the whole of our Omdyn; been found to have not perished with the Cylosis raid. In news jubilantly received by Clan Grendakal and the Uskarling populace as a whole, Arne's return from seeming death has been kept relatively quiet out of his desire to avoid an overabundance of direct attention. Having been placed under the care of a progenitor culture during his time away, Arne is reportedly in excellent health but is somewhat reluctant to speak to public officials at the present time. The nature and identity of Cylosis' attackers remains a mystery that the young Skjoldr reportedly has no answer to. At this time, it is expected that his desire for privacy be respected, as is his right.  
  
 _Samus' Notes:_  
Well, at least I know I can always talk to Arne about how awkward it is to be the centre of attention like this. I hope he's handling it better than I am.  
  
 _Arne's Notes:_  
I'll..maybe talk to them if I feel ready later on. Just, not right now. I need some time to adjust to how different everything here is from home.  



	22. Chapter 22

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arne continues the investigation after a dreamscape encounter with the Archprince Trace of the Kriken Empire

_Dreamscape_

Arne's mind drifted far from his usual meditative dreams. His mind drifted towards a sight beyond his sphere, a dancing light of deepest crimson in contrast to his cool blue. He chanced a look at his thread of fate, the conduits of possibilities hanging just beyond the dreamscape like seaweed beneath the ocean surface. It was not something he often enjoyed doing; so many possibilities seemed to end in pain or unpleasantries. The apparition of a figure with a bifurcated blue helm, divided by a green line with a blade-like cannon haunted him in particular, something that stalked around possible futures and growled like a beast.

Its voice to him was like family, its gaze towards him more inviting than menacing despite its facelessness. Like it was beckoning him towards the abyss, towards a line where his and Samus' fates could go as they were, bind together stronger than ever...or split in discord and agony. Each branch of the cables of the future splitting into possibilities that would tether into all other things. A degree of responsibility that made him quail and shiver inside. Could he really be expected to handle that much pressure when he struggled to stand on his own two feet? But he turned his attention away from the blue and green figure, turning his attentions to the more immediate future. 

The red whisp was once again there, running at the head of a great swarm, entwined with a brutal green cable and its retinue. The red road it carved into the paths of fate was short, but its influence was heavy and its tributaries coiled around a massive swarm of other individuals making their way through time. He took a chance to look a little closer, and saw a pink thread roping into the red one. Orange, Blue, Red, Green, Pink and a myriad of other colours danced around into a spirograph of potentialities. Something important was about to happen. And when he took a closer look at the red thread, he got a visage of a singular yellow eye amidst a red tear dropped shaped head staring right back at him. 

"=Get out of my head.=" A shrill, scornful yet imperious and domineering voice commanded. Disdain dripped from the voice as if he had stepped into something foul and Arne realised his abilities had caused him to wander into someone else's thoughts. A combination of his inexperience, his brute force methods, and the other's all-consuming personality had alerted them to Arne's presence.

Their displeasure was experienced in a short, sharp manner, stabbing a sharp limb towards Arne and jolting him awake from the brief sleep he had. He woke up with a start, breathing hard and pushing himself out of his blanket as he wiped some sweat off his brow. The pale skin over his impressively toned and shaped leaned muscles were slick with sweat as he brought his mind back to reality; the bed below him automatically adjusting its shape to account for him no longer resting his back on it.

_Arne's Room, Dormitory Cluster Tertius, Magnus Academy_

He slept not out of necessity, but more out of finding peace in not having to face the waking world's problems for a few hours. He never allowed himself more than a few hours though, for one he didn't need to sleep to begin with and so it gave him no added restfulness. For another, he had too much to do to waste it with idleness such as sleep. It was a pleasant distraction and a way to spend some free time, nothing more. 

He pulled the weighted covers off of himself with a simple tug, rubbing at his eyes and looking around. The darkness of his room concealed nothing from his vision, and he heard the heartbeat of tiny flea-like insectoids hopping around, looking for dead skin cells to munch. The sound of their minuscule muscles moving inside of their carapaces, the sight of their every micronic hair twitching and ruffling together in motion so slow they seemed almost still. Despite their bullet speed jumps, they looked like photographs to him. He realised that he was hyperfixating again, and he shook his head to look towards the poster Solveig got for him; of his parents in full gear. 

Gyda standing tall and proud with her weapon in hand, her husband by her side and her team around her in a dramatic pose to give off a sense of heroism as they stood between ghoulish oppressors and the shivering victims of imperialism. Bold colours and even bolder stylised contrast. His heart raced a bit, and a small smile formed on his face at the sight of it as he stood up, brushing his finger against the holoposter to feel the resistance of the hard light. He wondered if his parents would be proud of him now, and sighed as he realised that he couldn't get any answers out of them. 

"Hope you're resting well..." He said to himself as he went to get himself washed. The hot water was pleasant, a luxury he was rarely afforded on Sentus Primaris where luxuries were always in short supply. He let his muscles relax and scrubbed himself off thoroughly; not bothering with the cleaning nanites out of not wanting to have the work be done for him. After finishing up with his cleansing rituals, he fetched some clothes, pulling on some underwear and a simple set of practical shorts and a shirt. He didn't really see the point in pyjamas when keeping cool was such an important part of sleep and they only meant another set of clothes in need of cleaning. He slipped on some socks and practical shoes and looked towards the computer terminal placed on a desk in a corner.

Sitting himself down and scooching forward, he typed something on the keyboard. Sure a hard-light or neurotextual interface would be fancier, but the mechanical feedback of pressing keys and receiving output was satisfying in an odd way he couldn't put his finger on. A few clicks and screen taps and he was at the chat application Samus and himself had programmed as a way to fill a lazy afternoon more than a year ago; shared with a few friends as a way to hang out with minimal hassle. All designed to accomodate the two teenagers' immense need for stimulation. 

A text conversation with Samus was perhaps a low tech method of communicating with her, but he wanted something more discrete than the holochamber. Plus, he liked feeling like a computer master when he managed to encrypt the conversation in such a way that the Mind-Spider wouldn't notice rather than just relying on his armour or their psychic bond to speak to her. Of course he was sure Zurvduat would have criticised something about his coding, some unnecessarily sloppy structuring or inefficient compilation. Those harsh words had driven him to make it as neat as possible, but he couldn't help but think maybe he made some errors somewhere, maybe there were unneeded holes...maybe the Mind Spider was aware of his work after all. 

Samus' profile image of a drawing of herself in armour with her helmet off with Pyonchi on her head and her robotic Gecko pet crawling on her shoulder while she beamed and gave a thumbs up showed up and dragged him from his musings. His own profile image of himself reaching a hand out for his ravens with his helmet removed, looking into the sunset of Sentus Primaris followed suit. 

hatchingSentinel: hey arne!!! :D  
novaKnight: Hello Samus. <3  
hatchingSentinel: <3!   
novaKnight: You alright?  
hatchingSentinel: yeah things are going pretty good! Just you know, getting used to how things work around here. I'll get the hang of it!!  
hatchingSentinel: Buuuut....  
novaKnight: :?   
hatchingSentinel: What about yoouuuuuu? :eek:  
novaKnight: Oh well, yeah things are pretty good here too. Nothing to complain about really. Happier to be talking to you again though, Samus. :) <3\.   
hatchingSentinel: heehee, awww, thanks, Arne. <3  
hatchingSentinel: You know I'm always happier to be talking to you! c:  
hatchingSentinel: Now I know you've probably got something important to tell me soooo...well don't keep me waiting! ^_^  
novaKnight: Has anyone ever told you that you are relentlessly adorable?  
hatchingSentinel: you do every five seconds ;D!!!  
novaKnight: Ah, damn, you've got me there.   
novaKnight: Okay, getting more serious now.  
hatchingSentinel: serious mode on! >:)  
novaKnight: Hahaha XD!  
hatchingSentinel: :p  
novaKnight: Okay...okay. 

It was time to get a bit more serious now, this was fun and all of course, but Arne knew that he wasn't just here to catch up with his girlfriend. He thought only briefly about how to broach the topic of what he had just seen in his sleep before committing, his fingers hitting the keys at speeds no unaugmented human would have been able to follow. He breathed in a bit, his typography immaculate as always thanks to Zurvduat's all-consuming perfectionism.

Samus knew that too, she could just feel his pensiveness despite the distance of space that separated them. She knew a lot of people who were involved with one another said that they had a sort of connection, but she imagined when she said it regarding herself and Arne; it was rather more literal than it was with most non-psychics. The grey sensation of his worries was just palpable before her young mind's eye and it drew a frown from her on the other end of the computer.

novaKnight: I just had a dream-vision, similar to what you told me after your trance earlier. I think our problems might be connected somehow? The shapeshifter and the pirate drones.   
hatchingSentinel: huh...Okay, that's definitely serious then. :(  
hatchingSentinel: What else did you find in the dreamscape?  
novaKnight: Well, I think a Kriken Prince might also be involved. I'm not sure how, but my distant sight drew me towards some articles about Trace, and I think I saw him in my vision?  
hatchingSentinel: Oh, okay, that is absolutely not a good thing.  
hatchingSentinel: Trace is one of the worst out of the whole bunch, and that's saying something, but I can't think of how he could be tied into this. >:?  
novaKnight: Well, maybe they're not aware of how they tie into each other? What I do know is that they intersect in the dreamscape, and the consequences that lead out from there are huge.  
hatchingSentinel: ...yeah I think I know what you're referring to. It's weird though; I don't think I saw Trace in the dreamscape? Unless you poking around changed some possibilities?  
novaKnight: I hope I'm not the one responsible for setting all this into motion. Because so many of those potentials looked so...grim, so...  
hatchingSentinel: Arne! Listen!!  
hatchingSentinel: It's not your fault, you're not the one who made Trace who he is!!! Don't blame yourself for things you have no control over!!! :mad:  
novaKnight: I...yeah you're right Samus. Besides, I saw his whisp diverging to that path before I poked around. Couldn't really tell what they're planning to do though, too complicated to look that far ahead. Or at least, I'm not experienced enough yet.  
hatchingSentinel: ugh I know, I wish we didn't have to wait so long for esoteric training. >_<  
novaKnight: Yeah, I know. :(  
hatchingSentinel: well arne. I think that I can do something on my end. we're going to go and see if we can't find more of the drones.  
hatchingSentinel: piece together more of their logs and see if we can't get some solid clues from that.  
hatchingSentinel: probably more infiltrators wandering around too, so we're going to see if we can't break the spy ring around here.  
hatchingSentinel: if it is all connected, it'd probably help you out too!!! :)

The thought brought a smile to Arne's face, he really would like to join with her in solving a mystery. Even as far apart as they were, doing stuff together was always fun; even when it was as incredibly dangerous as taking on two of the Old Foe and saving a whole sector from annihilation. 

A sentiment that Samus of course, couldn't agree with more. After all, if they couldn't help each other even when apart, then could they really be said to be close? Something like this she figured, would be a cakewalk compared to the prior life or death adventure she was in, even with the complicating factor of far more people in harm's way.

novaKnight: Thanks, I'd really appreciate that. :)  
novaKnight: I'm going to check around for any possible anomalies. Maybe just explore a bit too, that should help keep my mind at ease.   
hatchingSentinel: a good bit of exploration does the mind good!!!  
hatchingSentinel: we probably have time anyway, so don't feel bad about taking a bit for yourself you know??  
novaKnight: I've been taught that there's a saying regarding pots, kettles, and their black colouration that applies here.   
novaKnight: You're not exactly the universal champion at rest and relaxation yourself, have you even been to any of the recreation facilities at your academy yet?  
hatchingSentinel: well...i uh...the swimming facilities are full of really cute people and the gym looks...you're right i don't really relax all that often.   
hatchingSentinel: there's just so much to do and see.  
hatchingSentinel: just feels like a waste of time to sit around and absorb any of them at a time.  
novaKnight: I know that feeling, I feel like even taking a nap is wasting hours I could be using to do anything else.  
novaKnight: I feel bad even trying the games Solveig wants to show me sometimes.  
hatchingSentinel: hah you too??? :D  
hatchingSentinel: my podmates are soo pretty and i dont know who to flirt with first.  
novaKnight: Honestly, same here. I'd like to be with most of them you know? Maybe one day we could all do a group date?  
hatchingSentinel: ooooh that would be so much fun!  
novaKnight: I know right? :)  
hatchingSentinel: :)  
novaKnight: <3  
hatchingSentinel: <3  
novaKnight: I'm going to do some checking around now. Nice talking to you, and see you soon Samus. I love you.  
hatchingSentinel: see you soon too arne. I love you too!

Arne smiled mostly to himself. While he'd certainly like a more physical encounter with her, he always loved their chats together. Whatever Zurvduat or Grey Voice said, they loved each other, and he hoped that would never change. Yet these long-distance meetings had a touch of bittersweetness to them. Even the sight of her self-drawn profile picture reminded him of every micron of distance between the two of them. He thought about the group date idea, and what could happen afterwards when they got somewhere quiet and comfy...then he blushed hard and adjusted his shorts. It probably wouldn't go down like that, but at his age, it was hard to not think of it. 

"Okay, ah, I should get busy at least." Arne said as he looked back to his computer to break his thoughts away from his hormonal daydreams. He took a moment to think about his objectives. Find something about the Krikens he could report back to Samus so they could compare notes. Hopefully, something useful to both of them would turn up.

He decided to chance a look at any returning alumni of the Magnus academy that might be of interest to him. He sifted through the database with the focus of a laser, doing his utmost to avoid the trap of diving into the endless links and search chains that could lead one astray if they weren't careful. Taking the skills he learned to become a Knight of the Tetrarch Order, he narrowed his search down with a few keystrokes. 

Search For: Current Freelancer

Okay, still a very large number of possible persons of interest, too large for him to sift through in one night before it would be time for his next planned outing with friends.

Anti-Kriken Empire activity.

Barely a dent in the parameters, the Kriken Empire; or the Imperial State of Akratik to be more formal; was the boogeyman of a very large array of beings across the universe. 

Associated with Magna Lodbrok.

Still way too many people, a smaller list sure, but she had a long life and trained or associated with a great many people who came to this place. Still, he was getting close.

Cosmic Grade Prestige. 

That narrowed the list tremendously. The Cosmic Grade of prestige was reserved for the very best of the best; a percentage so small as to be statistically insignificant. Still, this place produced quite a few of that lustrous category. More than he'd want to look for in one night. 

Associated with Gyda Skjoldr. 

The list dropped to a handful, but one caught his eye. Ordna.

"Whoa...no way she'd be here." Arne muttered in awe, a smile forming on his face before he sensed someone behind him and flicked his head behind him. He was almost ready to summon his armour then and there, but relaxed after the next heartbeat cleared his foresight and he caught a glimpse of red hair. 

"Might need to unwind a bit there Urglik." Illarion said as he walked in dressed in little more than boxers to keep cool, Arne flushing in his cheeks as he turned back to his computer. 

"So, what are you doing?" The Aelva asked curiously as he approached Arne, sought permission to lay his hand on his shoulder; and after a bit of hesitation, was allowed to do so. 

"Looking for people who might be able to help with some Kriken related issues who'd be willing to hear me out for a bit." He reached for a flask filled with self-cooling drink. He took a few sips before swallowing slightly hard and swinging his feet idly. Illarion looked at the electric Azdarchid like alien whose crested head almost seemed too big for her winged body to stand in a bipedal stance, let alone fly properly. Yet he knew that she was regarded as one of the very best that there had ever been.

"Ordna huh?" He said, looking back down to Arne, clearly wishing he'd arrived a bit earlier when he heard Arne using the shower. Oh well. Arne gulped a bit when he caught wind of those thoughts from Illarion and cleared his throat.

"Yeah, I've been following her career a lot recently. She's gotten up to a lot of interesting stuff." Arne said, trying his best to remain focused on his appointed task and closing his eyes.

He took a moment to breathe, then reopened them and flicked through the article presented to him. While he knew most of the stuff that this article spoke of already, he still carefully picked through the presented information to search for anything that might be of interest.

Illarion sat himself on the table and took a look at the screen again, tapping his chin. It was certainly interesting to him, and he sensed that Arne had other priorities for the moment so he'd let this slide until Skjoldr showed he'd be interested in giving it a shot. He was intrigued by him, but he wasn't going to be insistent when Arne was so busy with other things. Especially things he could tell were personal. 

"So, how will a top-level freelancer be able to help you with your current situation?" Illarion said, yanking some clothes with his telekinesis towards him to quickly throw on a shirt and some shorts to make the conversation a bit less awkward. Arne gave him a nod of thanks and turned his eyes back to the screen and pointed over to some select paragraphs. He particularly highlighted the portions that spoke of her actions against the house of Zakaza that had ruled the Empire for thousands of years.

"She's managed to meet the Kriken Emperor face to face and fought some of his children. If there's anyone who might know what Archprince Trace is up to, it'd be her." Arne explained, showing Illarion images of Ordna in combat with Imperial Blooded Krikens and attacking assets marked with the sigil of the Zakaza dynasty. A triangle the colour of blood with a single orange eye in its midst amidst a field of rust, sharp blades below of pure white crossed just below, and a circle of deepest black around them. A very hated and feared sigil by many, and one that made Illarion tense slightly. It was a sigil many feared more than even the Triskelion of swords symbol of the Empire itself. 

Arne could sense the negative energy that the sigil had, and almost regretted showing it to Illarion based on his negative response. He felt bad, like he had shown him something taboo. Already his mind was thinking of ways to earn his forgiveness so that this wouldn't hang over them in times where he could indulge their mutual interest. But Illarion put that aside by shaking his head and telling him it was fine. 

Though Arne wasn't sure on that himself, he accepted the need to move on and carry on with his explanation. He needed to work on swimming around in his tendency to blame himself for everything anyway he reminded himself as he brought up some additional info. 

"I've...gotten premonitions revolving around Trace. Dangerous ones, I think he's either involved in something that concerns us now, or is going to get involved soon." Arne said, letting out a sigh and flicking his red eyes over to Illarion who gave a nod of understanding and then a look of contemplation. 

"And what would the Archprince even want with us?" Illarion asked. It was a fair question, just one academy in a galaxy on the periphery of Kriken influence was a bit of a small target for someone of Trace's stature. But with his rite of passage years away and his need to prove himself above his siblings as high as it was... 

"This is a pretty prestigious place and he is trying to get his credits in...he might also figure there's something being studied here that would get him acclaim back home too. There's a lot of research being done here besides educational services in the lower levels." Arne said, taking a moment to bring up some screens of stuff he'd dug around while bored after his first-day orientation. So far it was all stuff available to anyone with so much as student access. Given the philosophy of the school little was closed off to the public besides what was necessary for privacy reasons.

He flicked through a number of programs involving extranormals, particularly those with especially abnormal mental capabilities or forms of awareness that allowed them to contribute immensely to research. Most of it stuff relating to general civilian science, few things that would really interest a conqueror or a warlord. But he stopped when he got to efforts to explore into the storage void dimensions the Alimbics used to cache away their resources somewhere the couldn't be plundered. Every storage facility had its own individual dimension created just for it, to ensure that no breach would be able to spread even in the unlikely scenario that one was made. 

"You think he might be looking into Progenitor studies?" Illarion said, folding his arms and looming over Arne's shoulder as he looked at the screen and folded his lips, staring at other research being done on progenitor relics and knowledge. Perhaps the most precious resource in the universe, far more so than any quantity of Fuel Gel, Xelemir, Psionite, or Cosmium.

"I'd bet he is." Arne said, smirking until Solveig opened the door and gave a courteous knock on the other side of it after having entered. Her characteristic massive beaming smile was written all over her expression, and she giggled like a manic schoolgirl as she held a tablet in her hands. Keeping it close to her chest so that Arne and Illarion couldn't see, she tiptoed over to them, resting her head atop Arne's and making him suddenly aware of the sensation of her chest pressing into his back to get another blush out of him. 

"Hey Gremlin girl." Illarion said to Solveig's response of smiling and blowing a kiss at him as she then brought her arms around Arne and showed him what was on the tablet, getting a raised brow out of him as soon as he looked at what was on the screen. 

"I figured you could use some help before we went out so because I'm suuuuuper into thinking ahead and just you know, great? I did some digging on my own. And with a bit of my ultra-sleuthing I got some juicy deets to share with you all." Solveig said with enthusiasm as Arne analysed the information presented in front of him.

What immediately caught Arne's attention were some of the materials highlighted by Solveig, a number of suspicious shipments, heavily encrypted communications, and a few people nobody quite recognised slipping in and out of class repeatedly. However, of particular interest to him was a note that the facility was recently visited by an ambassador of the Kriken Empire who was part of the personal retinue of...Archprince Trace! Eureka!

"How did you get some of this stuff? It's...it's great! Honestly, I could just kiss you." Arne said, an enthusiastic Solveig flushing brilliantly and a few bashful glances between the two being exchanged rapidly while Illarion laughed so hard Arne worried he might just fall off the table.

"Well...what's stopping you?" Solveig said almost daringly in a way that made Arne freeze up, not sure if this was a joke or not. He looked at her to confirm, and then leaned in to sneak in a smooch from her as she giggled. A smirk grew on her lips as Illarion then snuck one in from Arne just a little later, getting him to flush even more as he chuckled nervously. 

"Ah, gods, we should probably get going before I die of flustration." Arne said with a bright tint to his cheeks. He stood up and as he already had his shoes on, walked outside, looking briefly back at Solveig and Illarion sizing each other up and stealing kisses from each other before they nodded at him to go ahead. 

He didn't have to wait for long, as Solveig and Illarion had both come out in their exosuits while Arne's own armour manifested over his body, encapsulating it in the familiar embrace of the ferrochitin he wore so often. It made him feel safe he admitted, as well as powerful. It felt good to be back in the armour, and it felt good to have his friends by his side as they approached behind him.

"Ready to get going Arne? Shouldn't take too long to find Ordna!" She said, smirking as she put the tablet away. 

"Yeah, let's get go." Arne said with a nod.

Arne weaved his way through the mass of people gathered in the halls as deftly as he threaded the needle of hailstorms of incoming fire time and time again. He was quick as always, carefully keeping close to his group while avoiding bumping into anyone as the nocturnal student and faculty body milled about. It almost reminded him of some of the bugs that dwelled on Sentus Primaris, swarming around in their hive patterns according to a logic he found endlessly fascinating. 

He had his new helmet on, letting the V-shaped visor feed information into his suit, while the more knightly styled armour fitted comfortably over his body. More rounded looking spaulders fitted over his shoulders, straighter and smoother plating to give a more humanoid, heroic look than something so alien and insectoid, still the same overall colour scheme of course; with his purple varia visor staring out into the world and a darker blue colour scheme to his limb armour. People looked at him and nodded, it felt nice; especially to not be stared at quite so hard.

Taellarja waved over to him as soon as she caught sight of him, the Aelva quickly forming a sly smirk as she swung her legs a bit as she sat atop a large plant pot's rim. Her twin-tailed lustrous black hair hidden by the conical helm she wore, its eyepieces giving a somewhat menacing glare, the bifurcated mouthpiece calling to mind old medieval helms and the hand length blade-shaped horns on the side making her seem considerably more monstrous than she actually was. Lithe and limber and coloured primarily green with some yellow and black, her armour shifted like a living thing as she stood up and then flipped off of her vantage point.

He returned the smile and wave before she dropped onto her feet and made a quick "ta-da!" gesture as she made landfall. Solveig offered a clap while Illarion gave two thumbs up as Taellarja looked inordinately pleased with herself to an almost unbecoming degree based on the avatar she had chosen for the subtitles her suit was sending out for her speech to the others. But she soon slinked over to Arne, taking her time and not seeming to be in a rush as she approached with a catlike smirk on the recorded avatar for her subtitles. 

"Whatcha up to at this hour?" She asked slyly, her expression almost smug in its surety that she commanded his attention and focus. He didn't mind this assumption, after all, it wasn't an inaccurate one, and he had to resist the urge to play with her hair as it waved slightly with her movements beneath her helmet as her communications avat showed. It was a tempting distraction from his current tasks, but a distraction all the same. 

"I'm looking for Ordna, trying to see if she might have anything on Trace she might not be willing to speak about unless it's well...face to face." Arne said, getting a nod out of the Aelva as she stroked at her face and tapped her foot on the ground in contemplation. She nodded and then raised a finger in triumph as Arne could just about see the light bulb appearing over her head.

"Ah-hah! Ordna's been seen in the building, but she's a bit busy. On the other hand, though, I know a way to get her attention. One that should work every time." She said, proudly rubbing at her chest and giving a cocky grin that made Illarion raise an eyebrow. One could almost take a knife and just cut the scepticism that was radiating off of Illarion as he folded his arms.

"Every time huh?" He said before Taellarja nodded with a smile and almost instant affirmation from Solveig who almost seemed offended that Illarion would even be doubting at all. 

"Six million and one per cent sure it'll work!" Solveig said with a thumbs-up as she walked ahead. 

"That is...a lot of certainty wow. Okay if you're that confident." Arne said, tapping his chin briefly before nodding at her, stretching slightly and letting the tension in his arms melt a bit as he sensed something he couldn't quite place. Something that made him scratch a bit at the back of his neck and look behind him. He thought he saw a flash of pink for a moment, but it was gone before he could focus on it for too long. He quickened his pace noticeably, drawing his lips into a fine line as he kept close to his friends, just far away enough for him to move into position if needed. 

Perhaps it was paranoia; perhaps he did feel something that was truly worth being concerned about. What he did know was that he felt like something was amiss, and it was likely going to keep bothering him for a while yet. He looked towards one of his friends...and being able to call them that did indeed feel nice...and made a small gesture.

"I think someone's watching us." He said quietly, low enough to be sure nobody could hear as the other three looked back at him; their helmets now already up to communicate with the data network around them continually; just as his own was. It was unnecessary, they were speaking through helmet transmissions, but he felt the urge to maintain secrecy all the same. His mind drifting somewhat as he huddled closer to them, moments stretching into eternities as he kept close and part of himself found it impossible to not drift into the past. A reminder of why he had to be on his guard with what he said. 

_Sentus Primaris, six months ago_

The two were exploring a set of abandoned fortifications, the cold architecture offering little in the way of attempted warmth or familiarity. Spartan and utilitarian even by the strange aesthetic standards of the Alimbics as cyclopean reminders of duty no longer possible to fulfill gazed upon the people of the present. 

The two of them had secured permission from Elmorni to poke into it, see what they could reclaim from the site. They'd already acquired a number of upgrades even. Yet Samus felt uneasy, looking at the light in the eyes of some of the statues shifting. "I think your dad is watching us." Samus said, making Arne look towards her with concern as he cradled his helmet in his free hand, sitting on a vantage point to look down a hallway while she played around with a terminal. 

"Are you sure? He said the security systems here weren't under central control yet." Arne said, chewing on his lower lip slightly as she nodded, Elmorni making a complicated series of hand gestures nearby to access a sealed door. Elmorni being nearby made him feel safe, secure, and protected, but the idea of Zurvduat watching him only made him feel anxious. 

"Arne." She said through the Comms in the hopes that Elmorni nor Zurvduat would be able to hear.

"Do you really believe that he hasn't gotten everything running by now?" She asked. 

"I...I don't know...maybe?" He remembered saying before the world seemed to fade as he felt something worming into his mind. He could shut it out if he wanted, but the moment he felt the texture of the tendril worming into his thoughts his will to resist melted as the world began to stretch away from his vision until all was black. 

"-Why do you waste time on small talk when your mission remains unfulfilled?-" The cold voice of Zurvduat made him feel chills as he just about choked at the feeling of being probed in such a way in this bleak mindspace. The grey form of Zurvduat hovered near him, wispy and nightmarish like some manner of wraith with a dreadful yellow eye staring at him judgingly. 

"-Why are you letting her fill you with doubts, Primoris? You have a duty to the Order as a Squire. A duty you have yet to fulfil.-" He said with whispered menace that reverberated in his mind as he yelped and shirked away, hiding his face while the neckless head of the Alimbic got frightfully close to his face. 

"W-we're just t...t-talking l-like how friends are supposed to...p-please we'll do the mission!" Arne choked, tears flowing down his eyes as his adoptive fath-

Zurvduat's apparition grew darker shades and the mindspace began to quake with anger while hellish screeching filled his mind's ears. "-YOU ARE NOT MY SON! HOW MANY TIMES MUST YOU LEARN THIS LESSON!? YOU ARE BOUND TO ME BY DUTY, NOT FAMILY!-" A sour thunder in Arne's thoughts made him wail as he hid away, blubbering out apologies. 

"-STOP CRYING ALREADY! A KNIGHT HAS NO USE FOR TEARS-" He howled as he started to reach for him before he could feel someone tugging at him, a friendlier presence dragging him back to the light. 

"Arne." Samus said before he opened his eyes and then looked at Samus who tilted her head in concern. 

_Present_

"Arne." The voice was wrong, too soft and a bit too high pitched.

He blinked and saw Solveig instead, realising he had spaced out for a period of a few seconds.

"You okay?" She asked. He nodded and shook his head, helmet and all as if to shake off the evil spirits that had clouded his mind. 

"Sorry, got lost in thought for a bit." He said, though the avatar expression that Solveig pinged him back with informed him immediately that she wasn't buying that. Though to be entirely honest, just the sensation of soft concern and fizzing doubt that his psychic senses were able to detect would have told him that. 

"Traumatic flashback, wasn't it?" Illarion said as Arne felt the need to protest burn inside for a second. He wasn't weak...he didn't need...he bit his lower lip and just gave a small nod, a compromise. Not fully admitting it out loud, but not keeping that truth from them. He felt briefly ashamed at his inability to hide such information from them, but did his best to suppress it.

"Hey, we're all here for you if you need it." Taellarja said as she brought an arm around Arne and helped walk him towards the destination she had in mind. She took a second to look behind herself and squinted and moved a bit quicker as she felt a bit of unease herself.

"So what's all this about Trace anyway?" She asked, humming a bit as she looked to the other two surrounding Arne.

"Arne had a vision dream where Trace singled him out. Maaaaybe, he might have something to do with the feeling of being stalked around here? I mean, I'm not the biggest Kriken expert, but Trace is operating in this galaxy sooo maybe..." Solveig said, her voice almost immediately drowned out by Taellarja choking on her own spittle beneath her helmet as she looked to her friends in stammering disbelief. Solveig's horned helmeted head's darkly coloured visor glinted as she stopped, the flight mask like mouthguard hissing as she sucked in filtrated air while Illarion's crested conical helm clasped the wing like crests at its side a bit closer to his head in surprise.

The next few seconds were quiet enough for Arne to be overly aware of his own heartbeat, his next words coming out largely for the sake of breaking the sudden silence. "I have a feeling that this is supposed to be really, really bad." Arne said, chewing on his lower lip slightly as Taellarja's dialogue avatar looked like she was about to have a heart attack. 

"Trace knows about you? Like...you personally?" She said in a whisper as if saying his name too loudly would get the attention of some manner of demon king. 

"Well, I don't think he knows my name, but he acknowledged me personally when I strayed into his fatestrand in the Morphoscape." He said as Taellarja tugged at the horns on her helmet and let out a long, wheezing exhale. 

"Oooookay we definitely need to get Ordna now then." She hissed.

"You talk about Trace like he's an archdevil rather than a person." Arne said, clearly mystified about how a single Kriken could command this much fear. But then, he had stared down the Sun Stalker and Moon Hunter and triumphed, so it was hard to feel properly afraid of so many mundane terrors.

"He's just...a Kriken at the end of the day. This is far from Kriken territory, whatever he's planning well...we've got the skill and talent here to put a stop to whatever he's got planned. Just...have a bit of faith really." Arne said, pausing periodically as he tried to guess at what to say next to make sure the others were following. The lack of rapport he had, something that made his conversations with Samus flow so easily, was a bit of a stumbling bloc, his mind constantly worrying about misstepping.

"Arne...Arnie...Trace basically is an Archdevil. The Kriken Imperial Family is...infernally powerful. Like, personally. Like...progenitor warrior strong. And he's got entire armies and fleets under his personal command and he's got more war crimes to his name than he's got centimetres to his height!" She paused before realising what she said and added "Which...admittedly isn't saying much." She added, huffing a bit.

"Oh...yeah that is kind of problematic. Still, I think I can handle myself against him. Just like I'm sure Samus can handle Weavel." Arne said as Solveig stopped and raised her eyebrows in concern.

"She's going to try taking on one of Weavel's schemes...on her own?" She asked, utterly incredulous. 

"Not on her own." Solveig at first seemed relieved. As if she hadn't gone off the deep end, holding onto the hope that maybe Samus wasn't completely out of her mind.

"I'll help her, as soon as we've got an opening." Solveig's relief shattered instantly as she shook her head rapidly and muttered "nonononono" even faster, the alarm written on her face making Arne's heart sink as Illarion also stopped to side-eye him, the flash of emoticons on his visor informing Arne he may have made a misstep somewhere.

"Arne, you and Samus are planning to take on Neutronium class war criminals...on your own? War Criminals with huge fleets and armies?" Illarion said, resting his hand on Arne's shoulder as he tilted his head at him, the last of Gyda's line making an embarrassed looking face beneath his helmet, feeling a rush of shame beneath his helmet after all this scrutiny.

"Arne, we're thirteen. Even if you're strong enough to beat them all on your own, how are you going to stop their soldiers from killing trillions? Quadrillions? Quintillions? We're talking armies that can lay waste to entire galaxies. Unless you can tear apart a huge chunk of the universe, you can't stop them from their plans. Not unless it all hinges around something a small group of people can fight over." Illarion said, trying his best to be the voice of reason as Arne slowly nodded and sighed.

"Then what are we supposed to do?" He asked, not wanting to just throw in the towel when there was clearly something he could do. "I can't not use the power I was given. There's got to be something especially important for Weavel and Trace to go so far from their usual operating areas. Something we can stop. I just...look I just have the premonitions. I know there's something I have to do." Arne said, shaking h is head and building his reservoirs of confidence and determination back up. He hardened his resolve, clenching his fists and straightening himself.

"Ordna knows people who can work on that sort of scale. We're talking like...the work of a very large number of Freelancers and Ultramilitants; standing armies and all that. But...you...you're here to be a kid, like us. You can't live your entire life on adventure, even if its fun! And Gods know it'd be really fun to just bounce from one place to the next, never putting down roots...going on quests, helping people in need, raiding dangerous places...but it's a very lonely life. And...and I think you deserve better than that." Solveig said, continually upping her voice every time Arne tried to get his own word in to let him know that she wasn't done talking until she finally nodded her head beneath her helmet and got a look of understanding out of Arne as he reached a hand out to the chin of her helmet and tilted her head upwards to him.

She smiled, her expression visible on his heads up display. "You've suffered enough Arne...can't you take a break at least a little? Throwing yourself so hard into your destiny without thinking about yourself isn't going to end well." She said, her voice soft and full of concern.

"I'm not afraid to die." Arne said.

"It's not that...it's that it's going to be a path of heartbreak and loneliness. You need love and happiness too." She said, Arne taking a look around at the others as Taellarja looked up; having sent a signal ping out to what Arne could only presume was Ordna as the four crossed into a high ceiling room, where airborne or arboreal individuals were busily traversing above them, others moving on walkways or on the ground level alongside them.

"Come on Arne, we didn't say you should do nothing, just...don't do it alone. There's people who can help. Always will be. You and Samus don't have to hold the only two torches in the universe." Taellarja said, putting her hands on her hip and pushing them a little forward, looking up at Arne as he backed a little away from Solveig and gave a small nod.

"Besides, what would be more fun, trying to take on the Inferno Pack and the Tracer Hussars on your own or with friends and a whole bunch of badasses?" Illarion said with a smile as Arne nodded, he did after all have a point that he could hardly just ignore.

Ordna, however, interrupted his thoughts, descending atop a perch that he had his attention away from for a few moments, electricity crackling around her form briefly as straightened her beaked head and scraped her hind claws atop the rock in the room's garden, her lightning-filled eyes humming before she dimmed the glow and stood herself onto her hind legs, her wings collapsing so neatly into the sides of her arms that he could hardly imagine how she could unfurl them again; looking like enormous tonfas projecting past her elbows with hints of feathery sails covered in her electric toned armour more than wings. 

Arne swallowed a bit as Ordna reared herself up to a rather formidable height that reminded him that she was about the size of a Quetzalcoatlus, though humans and aelva really were on the rather shorter side of the many sapient species that lived across the universe. Rundas was nearly four meters tall when he properly stretched out his legs, the average Urtraghian space pirate was three and a half meters tall, even Trace for as much as they mocked him was taller than the human average by a considerable margin when he wasn't crouching.

Ordna though?

Ordna made him feel tiny in a way that tickled the animal part of his brain that wanted him to avoid staring back at anything that read like a predator and made him have to look up to meet them in the eye. He fought the instinct down in a hurry but the overall structure of Ordna as her long sinuous spaded tail curled over her head and then straightened back down made him feel a tinge of unpleasant memories. He was thankful for a moment that she only had a single head and primarily was bipedal, and added to that with thanks that her colouration was all wrong to be the five faces of his nightmares.

Yet being in her presence sparked something in him. Awe? She was a legendary warrior whom his mother considered to be a peer worthy of respect. It would only be natural then, for him to offer her his own deference, but without getting on his knees, out of a sensation that such would be construed by the Proud Omdynian as patronising and a sign of having been cowed out of his own sense of self-worth. He gulped and remained standing, standing straight and trying to make sure she couldn't perceive any faltering in his stance or his salutations to her as he offered her a traditional Grendakal salute and extended his hand. 

"Hey there...I'm...the son of Gyda." He said clearing his throat and feeling some sweat roll down his forehead as she looked towards him dead on, snapping her beaked head away from the others and crouching somewhat to make it easier to speak to him, all without getting so close as to invade his personal space. He could just about feel the electricity around her, her presence like living storm clouds and her gaze akin to that of the thunder gods of ancient legend or modern religion. She clacked her beak a bit and let out a cawing sound, not one of displeasure, but excitement. She buzzed with delight and clasped her hands together. 

"...Gyda and Erik's child? Alive?" She said, looking around and then gesturing to Arne to follow her to somewhere more private, crawling into a room with a number of impressive looking garden spaces whose door closed behind Arne's group as soon as they were through and she could readjust herself. She checked around to make sure nobody was here who shouldn't be, and then looked back at him, turning her head down towards him and letting out a small squawking sound before bringing herself onto all fours in a way that made Arne reflexively flinch backwards.

"So uh...I'm Arne...Eriksen." He said, the other three around him giving him nods of encouragement as she hummed in satisfaction. 

"I have been waiting a long time to speak to you Arne. I thought I'd never get the chance...when I got word of what happened to your family I, assumed you were lost to us as well." Her voice broke slightly, the surprisingly high pitched tone buzzing and humming as if autotuned or filtered through an old radio. But the sadness in her tone disappeared quickly as she took another look at Arne, just happy to see that he was alive, healthy, and clad in such wondrous armour. She reached out a hand, asking permission to touch him, and was granted it, rubbing her claws against him and cooing briefly before turning to his new friends.

"You know how lucky you are to be able to know him, yes?" She said, getting a series of nods in response. 

"Taellarja, why didn't you tell me he'd be coming here? I'd have had so much more prepared to show him." She said, almost disappointed in the Aelva who leaned against a tree and shrugged.

"I just thought maybe it'd be a bit more secure to let you find out yourself." She said, getting a trilling noise out of Ordna in response. 

"So...I heard you might have something that would help us with a problem I've got with Trace and Weavel?" Arne said, the joy from Ordna's expression disappearing frightfully fast as those names were mentioned. 

"Tell me everything you know." She said, her voice so cold one could just about imagine the icicles hanging off from her beak while she loomed near Arne, listening intently as he explained his conundrum to her. She remained still throughout the explanation, and when he finished she stood herself up to her full height and flicked her foreclaws up and down in a sign of acceptance. She had heard what she needed to hear.

"I will take a look as soon as I am able to, as for you Arne, I expect you and Samus to take the academic duties given to you seriously. When the time calls that I have something for you, I will give the call and we will hunt together. But keep in mind; you're here to learn to live amongst your own kind, and part of that is learning to let others help you. A knight such as you shouldn't stand on your own." She said, laying a hand on his back and kneeling towards him. 

"Ordna...I'd just feel so...useless sitting around when there's things I can do with what I've been given. When I was given this armour...this blood, it was to help people...wasn't it?" He said as Ordna once again made the affirmation claw dip. 

"You are, but I'm sure you've been told that you can't bear everyone's burdens on your own. You're still new to the world; let us show you how to navigate it. But don't think I don't want to fight alongside you soon." She said, humming in contentment as Arne sighed and nodded back at her. 

"Yeah, Arne we've barely even shown you around. Just...have a little break some times you know? Besides, there's so much fun to be had here!" Solveig said, standing closer to Arne and offering her hand; a gesture he responded to by taking it and Illarion's hand when it was offered as well, feeling a bit flustered to be at the center of this much attention. 

"Don't be afraid Arne, I know many who will be able to help make sure that your wait for action won't be long. Now...this...shapeshifter you see so often, that is something that is more your concern. Don't let them know you are aware of being followed. Not just yet." She said, taking another look around and then lowering her head close to him again. 

"I was already planning on that. Just, trying to do something to get them into the open." Arne said with a sigh. 

"Hrm. Maybe give us a few days, we should think of something to do that." Taellarja said with a grin. 

"I'm glad we could come to this understanding. When the streams bring us together again, I hope to fly by your side, brave eagle. Until then, I will stay in touch with you whenever you ask." She said, giving a light peck to his helmeted head and then stretching out her wings to push herself off the ground, the crackle of lightning following her as her wingtips whipped towards the ground and then pushed her through the air. 

"I won't forget." Arne said, looking back towards his trio of friends and managing a smile beneath his helmet.

"So where do you guys want to go?" He asked.

"Well, back to the dorm would be nice. I had stuff I wanted to show you." Solveig said, touching her fingers together.

"Same." Illarion added, with Taellarja also raising her hand.

"Oh well, I guess that settles it." Arne said, somewhat surprised at their responses to say the least, having expected to want to show him the nightlife around here.

After a pleasant time, Arne checked his messages briefly and was pleased to see that as he expected, Samus had more messages for him. He responded to them as soon as he was able, humming as he tapped at the keyboard that the nanites generated and input his message. He felt a bit of unease and remained in an elevated state of caution, but he had fun, so he was somewhat relaxed at least. Enough so to remove his armour and return to wearing a simple pair of shorts and a shirt, tapping one foot to release some nervous energy while drinking something out of a bottle in one hand.

hatchingSentinel: arne! ive got some really big news!!! :D  
novaKnight: Oh?  
hatchingSentinel: i managed to get some leads on trace and weavel!  
novaKnight: That's really fantastic news! Ordna says we should probably lay low for a bit first though...but uh. Yeah go on, I'm interested. :)  
hatchingSentinel: what, just let the adults handle it for a bit? >:?  
novaKnight: Yeah I know that's kind of...not our thing.  
hatchingSentinel: oh you bet! most of them could get hurt or worse!!!! we can't just sit back and do nothing :mad:  
novaKnight: Well, no we can't but aren't our lessons going to start soon?  
hatchingSentinel: yeah i know but...we can make time right? Not all of the leads we pursue need to be on foot.  
novaKnight: True I guess.  
hatchingSentinel: well, what do you have for your first lessons?  
novaKnight: History it seems. Should be interesting! You can tell a lot about a society by how they portray history.  
hatchingSentinel: oooooooh. same here!!! i'm just hoping that they don't say too many inaccurate things. its going to be really hard to resist the urge to correct them if they do.  
novaKnight: Haha! Yeah, I hope your classes are ready for you.  
hatchingSentinel: there's also squad fighting too. Hrm, think our drills with our mechanoids or the other kids on Arganti would be useful here? So used to fighting either on my own or well...just with you!  
novaKnight: I mean...we built our mechanoid companions like Qaeystra or Ivar.  
hatchingSentinel: trueeee but a mechanoid you built to have tea parties with you isn't the same as fighting alongside people who were well...born and have a personality you don't set!  
hatchingSentinel: or well, people who don't know as much about the progenitors as we do in general are going to be...weird and hard to deal with.  
hatchingSentinel: i just hrm...i'm just wondering if this really is the right place for me? structured schedules and lessons...i've been so used to learning things at my pace.  
hatchingSentinel: having to slow down for my teacher sounds hard.  
novaKnight: Yeah. Neither of us are really well, familiar with conventional education. Especially just being one in a class and not the single prodigy.  
hatchingSentinel: yeah, and well, i guess we're here to learn how to deal with other people and all???  
novaKnight: Correct. I think we can handle it...maybe. People here seem nice at least.  
hatchingSentinel: don't you mean are nice?  
novaKnight: I...yeah I don't think anyone's faking it but I still fear sometimes that well...not everyone's being sincere you know?  
novaKnight: Everyone is so nice to me even though I haven't done anything to earn it. Can it be real?  
novaKnight: I'm probably just being paranoid honestly. But I just, I'm not sure you know?  
novaKnight: I'm not like you, dedicated, caring, energetic, and devoted...you make everything look so effortless and fun. I just, feel like sometimes...what have I actually done to earn your love? Share a tragic backstory with you? Be relatable?  
hatchingSentinel: Arne.  
novaKnight: Yes Samus?  
hatchingSentinel: you deserve friends, being happy and loved! don't let your...former caretaker get in your head. that's what he wants you to think, that you're worthless and don't deserve to be happy!!!  
hatchingSentinel: i love you because you're sweet, because you care so much and are willing to go so far to help people. because you've been nothing but understanding with me and i can trust you so much. i can tell you things i just...can't share with anyone else. and you can share me things nobody else will understand. it's just...how many other people in the universe can either of us really relate to?  
novaKnight: I...yeah.  
novaKnight: You've been nothing but the best to me and I'm happy to have met you. Sorry for the mood swing Samus.  
hatchingSentinel: arne, you have nothing to apologise for!!  
novaKnight: Alright. :)  
hatchingSentinel: :)  
novaKnight: I'm really uh, looking forward to our next holodate. Heh...  
hatchingSentinenl: what's so funny :?  
novaKnight: It's just that well, this is so...mundane and domestic. Setting up a long-distance relationship date and talking about classes and friends we've made.  
hatchingSentinel: heeheee! :D  
hatchingSentinel: yeah it is very...normal teenage couple stuff huh???  
hatchingSentinel: oh right, the stuff about trace and weavel! duh, can't not finish that.  
novaKnight: Hrm?  
hatchingSentinel: i looked at some more of weavel's drones and i think trace and weavel are planning some sort of exchange facilitated by a third party.  
hatchingSentinel: it's over progenitor relics, they need access to something big enough to get the kriken empire and the confederacy to call at least a local truce.  
novaKnight: They're going to stab each other in the back as soon as they have access I'd imagine.  
hatchingSentinel: ian's told me that we'd call that sort of thing a "sucker's bet".  
novaKnight: I don't see what this has to do with suction.  
hatchingSentinel: something about being easy to mislead?? like a baby still sucking their bottle.  
novaKnight: Ooooh that makes more sense.  
novaKnight: Any idea of where it might take place?  
hatchingSentinel: not sure, but they probably know that they need some sort of biometric access to progenitor relics.  
novaKnight: ...  
hatchingSentinel: which i know, means we're direct targets. so stay safe arne.  
novaKnight: I will.  
novaKnight: Hold on...I don't think I'm alone in the room.

Arne paused as he felt something nearby, air being displaced, something making a move in the causeways of destiny. Possibilities fraying around him as he slowly backed away from the terminal and felt it more than heard it. Air being displaced. A silenced teleport. A sudden elevated sense of danger. A laser already fired just before the tip of the cannon could touch his head.

He ducked out of the way, avoiding the point-blank shot of the stun beam and grabbing at the arm gun of the invisible kidnapper. Hissing and crackling like a combination of rattlesnake and cricket filled his ears as the agent brought a shock gauntlet and jabbed it towards the boy, who sidestepped and smashed the other arm down with an elbow, skin smashing into shielding and making the invisible, once again silenced agent reel. Arne could feel the anti-contact electric charge preparing, not just through his precognition but also through his fingers and his augmented senses. While letting go would spare him the shock, it would give the agent free range of motion.

He gritted his teeth and powered his way through a shock that would have reduced a herd of elephants to ash and plasma, feeling the jolt of pain while ozone filled his nostrils but using the diversion of energy to grab the figure's cannon and smash it into their face, overpowering augmented muscle and power suit mechanics to throw it back, panting slightly and shaking his hand before he conjured up his paralyzer pistol with a thought and shot once at full charge, an ovoid bolt of neutral plasma arresting their energy and allowing Arne to slam them in the chest twice more with his fists; air slightly burning to get out of the way of his fists. He grabbed them and slammed them into the ground, striking them repeatedly in the face until he felt its shields splintering beneath thunderous impacts.

The agent fired off a sizzling blade that he recognised as a matter disruption field that would cut to the subatomic level. He sidestepped the first slash, waited for the displacement of air to inform him they had moved silently to his left and the ducked below their swing. They teleported again behind him, lining up another shot that he dodged with a flip to the side before firing off his next paralyzer shot, the agent managing to deflect it with a parry that prompted Skjoldr to sidestep, jumping back when they teleported again in an effort to cut off his legs at the knee with the blade. His toughened flesh and skin would offer great resistance to the sword, but it'd hurt.

Firing off a shot and wishing that he had more than one stored charged shot at a time on the pistol as the enemy deflected the shot again and forced him out of the way of the deflected bolt, he came to a realisation. If nobody else had been awakened by this point they had to have put something to prevent them from being aware of it.

"You put a silencer field around the room." He said firing off the energy blade mode to his pistol to block their next slash, a twisting strike meant to get at one of his shoulders. He skidded down the blade in the lock and brought his foot down onto the agent's thigh, knowing from sensation that something broke. The two traded a series of exchanges and parries, the agent clearly having had extensive training and experience in fencing and dueling; making usage of what Arne deemed to be a style best suited to rapiers. Very thrust focused, emphasis on the nimbleness of the blade work.

Arne's shirt was a bit loose and a slash dug through it, making him grunt with annoyance as his midriff was shown through the torn cloth. Tossing off his shirt and throwing it forward to provide a quick distraction, he backed up and jabbed the other in the midsection when they had approached to thrust into his gut, deflecting the stab with another movement. He pushed his annoyance to the back of his mind, he needed answers; so he couldn't kill them or overwhelm them to the point that they'd flee immediately. But he was getting tired of this as he pressed the agent towards a wall, his skill with the blade easily outmatching the agent's even with their invisibility and teleportation.

Arne brought up his armour's arm-sword in a flash of blue light after gaining some space by quickly extending the energy blade into a whip and then smashed right where he sensed the hilt of the other's blade, smashing it open and then pinning them to the wall with his next thrust, impaling them through the shoulder and then crumpling their cannon with a clenched hand before enwrapping them with the whip and setting the paralysis field up to maximum. Well, now it was over and he could at last get some answers.

Their armour's stealth field shorted out and Arne could clearly see the burgundy and maroon armour of a Kriken hitman. Their relatively slender armour and tall frame dwarfing the boy, especially in his civilian outfit. Insectoid, with an uncomfortably alimbic esque neckless tear drop shaped floating head with a single cyclopean red eye with no other features on its helmet. Its body spindly and ending in a number of spiked limbs with equally spiked shoulders and knees. They had been rendered unconscious by the paralysis whip's entanglement, and he took a look at the hilt of their blade.

"Kriken deathshiv." He said, mostly to himself as the silencer field came to an end and Solveig, this time hoping to get him on his own, crept into the room with a grin on her face before stopping and looking at the Kriken on the wall and yelping.

Arne looked back at her, the broken sword in his hand as he shrugged. "Oh uh...this guy tried to kidnap me." He said casually, trying to play it off as if this wasn't a complete violation of the entirety of Solveig's idea of safety and security while she rushed towards him, not even caring that he was shirtless as she pawed at him, examing every bit of him in a frenzy to make sure he was okay.

"Arne...you tried to fight a hitman on your own?!" She said with alarm clearly present in her voice.

"I could have won sooner but I wanted them alive for capture and well...silenced invisibility, needed to figure out their capabilities without tipping them off by using a different visor mode that could have seen them." He said, combat was his element. The violation of the idea of safety like this was almost...mundane to him, but he could see that she was on the verge of panicking. This wasn't something that was supposed to happen.

"I'm okay though...I'll look around for any way they could have gott-" He started.

"NO! ARNE NO! STOP! THIS ISN'T....TRAINING TIME THIS IS SERIOUS! SOMEBODY TRIED TO BLACKSHIP YOU AND YOU CAN'T JUST...ACT LIKE THIS IS NORMAL!?!! ARNE PLEASE JUST....Please, you could have been hurt and...Gods of the Clan please don't put yourself in harm's way like that." She said, hugging him close and burying her face in his chest where he realised she was mostly in just a shirt and underwear and flushed a bit.

"I...what do you want me to do?" He asked, looking at the Kriken as they twitched from the energy being fed into it by his pistol.

"I'll get the security team with a Rune." She said, making a few incantations and gestures to create a runic energy letter in the air and blowing it out of the room to reach the school's security personnel, who came running in almost immediate, teleporting where they had to in order to shave down their response time while Arne extracted his sword from the Kriken and let them collect it.

"I'll need some answers at least though. Just...why would they attack me here and now." He said as the Kriken was quickly put in stasis by the synths, one of whom presented him his pistol and nodded.

"Not to worry, we will send you relevant interrogation details as they arise. For the time being though, you will require a security detail." The mechanoid said, getting a glare from Arne.

"A security detail...I can handle mys-" He started before the mechanoid raised a digit.

"Arne Skjoldr, regardless of your combat capability you are thirteen years old. Your priority should be your maturation, not finding battle. Should we require your assistance, we will ask for you. But for now, please try to find safety in the Magnus academy while we attempt to pinpoint the source of this security breach." The Mechanoid said as Arne swallowed his reply and nodded.

"I'm sure they'll call you up...don't worry." Solveig said as she smiled and backed away, slowing her breaths while some of the Mechanoids stayed behind and she looked back at them through her AR glasses.

"Do you require momentary privacy?" One asked.

"Uhhh...we'll be fine." She said.

* * *

** Consolidated Logbook Entries **

Individuals: Royalty: Male: Kriken: Arkatika: Trace

One of the Archprinces of the Imperial State of Arkatik and a son to Emperor Mould and Empress Muse, Trace is considerably far down in the line of succession and has little chance of ascending to the throne himself. However, he makes up for his distance in the succession from Crown Archprince Skulpt with sheer viciousness, mean-spirited cruelty and blazing ambition. Trace is, like all members of the Zakaza dynasty, is equipped with extremely advanced technology derivative of the Alimbics whom the Krikens consider themselves the sole proper inheritors of. As a true purebred member of the dynasty, Trace carries a genemarker of unknown origins allowing him to make use of Alimbic and Progenitor technology and makes him into a rare breed of warrior above and beyond the majority of even his household. Despite his young age, Trace is already considered a universally renown war criminal responsible for galactic scale cleansings and numerous genocides and massacres. Trace's personal Imperial Army is known as the Ymakazin Ilagzi, the Red Shroud of Death, and is one of the most infamous military forces in the entirety of the known universe.

_Samus' Notes: He's a cruel, horrid little monster of a boy and I don't think I have enough foul words memorised to properly describe how he makes me feel. I'm hoping that when the time comes we can either make him reconsider his life, or at least bring it to an end._

_Arne's Notes: The worst sort of spoiled brat never told no throughout his entire life, a monster without functioning empathy for most of the rest of the living beings in existence. There's nothing in there but cold malice, and I'm afraid to have to face that._

Individuals: Heads of State: Royalty: Kriken: Emperor Mould

Emperor Mould is one of the most widely and intensely feared beings in the entire known universe. Head of the house of Zakaza, Mould stands at the apex of the hierarchy of Kriken society and has been the reigning Emperor of the Imperial State for the past thirteen and a half thousand Earth years; an immense achievement when until his ascension the average reigning period of an Arkatiki Emperor was less than fifteen years due to the continual assassinations and power plays within the imperial court. Mould has innumerable offspring, most of whom have not survived as long as he has. Many having been killed by Mould himself for failing to live up to his standards. Mould is known for being highly manipulative, ensuring none can overthrow him by keeping all possible claimants constantly locking horns with each other and unable to focus on himself, which has proven to be one of his greatest assets in his quest to ensure that his reign is perpetual. His paranoia is also well known amongst the political spheres of the universe, and few are able to get a physical audience with the Emperor without being carefully screened first.

_Samus' Notes: Nobody should be given a crown just for a bloodline. And Mould's cruelty seems to confirm why. He's one of the longest lasting and cruelest tyrants in the universe and he has no claim to it besides his ancestry. The average Kriken lives in misery under him, and all he has to his name is butchery._

_Arne's Notes: That the crowned heads of ancient empires are cruel and despotic isn't any surprise. The main surprise is that Mould has endured for so long despite all his cruelty and all the enemies he's made. I can only guess he has more than enough personal combat power to throw off any number of assassins._

Enemies: Sophontic: Organic: Power Armour Equipped: Kriken: Royal Hitman

Royal Hitmen are assassins and kidnappers in service to the Zakazan dynasty; sent out to deal with individuals that the Dynasty has particular ire for. Royal Hitmen are equipped with silencing fields, cloaking devices, variable weapon arm cannons, stasis generators, and disruptor blades all meant to ensure either a quick kill or a clean capture. Royal Hitmen are expected to remain silent and calm at all times, to never give any indication of why they are at their location, who sent them, or even whether the target is slated for death or capture. All to ensure operational secrecy and to prevent their handlers from being targeted for retaliation should a Hitman fail. Hitmen are also extensively augmented beneath their special purpose combat suits to allow them to preform feats far beyond any conventional Kriken soldier, allowing them to have a relatively high chance of dealing with their target with little in the way of backup and should they be discovered before they can fulfill their duty; fight their way to success. A broad array of failsafes are placed on Hitmen to ensure that even if captured, they will not be able to divulge any information they might have on them.

_Samus' Notes: How did they get through all the security in the Magnus academy? Even for elite commandos that should be an impossible feat. This has to be some progenitor device allowing them to tunnel through the usual teleportation blocks._

_Arne's Notes: A pretty decent fight for me unarmoured, but in my zero suit or my armour it should be pretty easy if this is what the Kriken assassin department has to offer. But I'm curious as to how they ascertained my location so quickly._

States: Monarchist: Superpowers: Imperial State of Arkatika

The Imperial State of Arkatika, better known as the Kriken Empire, is a monarchial state that emerged in the aftermath of the fall of the Alimbic Tetrarch Order. Once an associated and potentially related species of the Alimbics, the Krikens were left with control over a great swathe of former Alimbic Space following the Order's mysterious collapse and the even more shadowy extinction of the Alimbics in the space of a mere handful of years. With the Alimbics gone and most of their technology unusable and incomprehensible to the great majority of the universe, the Krikens simply parasite off of the infrastructure they could use to quickly crawl their way into a major power; spreading far beyond the Tetra galaxy of their origin. A fundamentally autocratic state, Arkatika is predicated on the inherent righteousness of the conquests of the Krikens, believing themselves to be the chosen species of a progenitor culture and therefore above all others. The State is also infamous for sending out the youth of its nobility to constantly find new worlds or prizes for the Empire's enormous military to conquer and absorb and stave off its internal issues a while longer with further growth, and as such is regarded as virtually a rogue state and a universal security risk.

_Samus' Notes: One of the great blights on the universe, we're going to have to work hard to win the people who live within it freedom from those who rule over and enslave them. Hopefully soon, before their nobles plunge the cosmos into war._

_Arne's Notes: I know that Section 9 has been trying to engender and support revolution within the Imperial State for centuries, but they've never been able to get more than supercluster level rebellions ongoing. We'd need to deal with the leadership to topple the whole thing, I think._

Individuals: Freelancers: Female: Darchida: Omdyni: Ordna

Ordna is regarded as one of the peaks of the Freelancer profession; a consummate fighter, explorer, troubleshooter, commando, and hero whose accolades are as numerous as they are awe-inspiring. Well known for her ability to control and produce electricity in excess of what is typical for her species and her tremendous speed and physical prowess, Ordna further enhances these with a host of customised battlesuits continually being upgraded and modified to fit her ever shifting standards. These abilities have combined with her sense of honour, duty, and responsibility to make her one of the most trusted, adored, and valued freelancers to have ever operated in Omdyn space in the millennia of the Omdyn's operations. While originally born on the world of Zalimi, Ordna has ranged far from her home world and galaxy and has engaged in nearly constant missions across much of the universe, going from galaxy to galaxy or planet to planet and rarely staying in one place for long. Perhaps the only frequent exception being her habit of returning to the Magnus academy where she had honed her abilities originally and made much of the friends she holds now.

_Samus' Notes: She's got an amazing career! c: I'm hoping I can get to know her as soon as possible, it says here in her record that she's even on good terms with Rundas._

_Arne's Notes: Absolutely astounding in her feats and capabilities, an icon to measure up to and an example for me to set myself by. I can only hope to match or surpass her story._

Cultures: Omdyni: Uskarling

The Uskarling Culture is regarded as one of the most martial yet practical in the cosmos; originally founded by the Uskarling Nation of the Zekunso Species on the homeworld of Agradhof and known for its requirement that all members put in socially necessary labour in exchange for much greater amounts of free time after the burdens of society were fairly shared with all citizens. This included defense and warmaking, leading to every single member of the culture being raised to fight both individually and as units throughout their lives; with regular drills being expected of most members and any member of the culture who has disabilities that would prevent them from fighting at optimal capability being required to receive treatment without charge. While not making a habit of using child soldiers, when Uskarling settlements are attacked and the adults and synths have failed to keep the attacker at bay; all remaining citizens over a certain age are required to mobilise, don levy armour and weapons, and form into units for one last line of defense to either repel the foe or allow some to escape; with the age line being all Uskarlings over the age of ten for humans. When war is declared, all citizens of adulthood who are not needed elsewhere are made to form into units and prepare for mustering orders according to the elected officer corps commands, and civilian craft are submitted for conversion to military purposes where practical while proper military vessels are mobilised or unmothballed. As the Uskarlings accept any who can share the burdens, will uphold the traditions of the Uskarlings and their chosen clan, and follow the standards of honour in return for the rewards regardless of creed or species; most Uskarlings are not Zekunso, and the Union of the Clans of Agradhofa that is the home state of the Uskarlings is one of the most diverse members of the Omdyn. More than half of the Omdyn human population is Uskarling in fact; the largest in the universe outside of the United Nations of Sol.

_Samus' Notes: It's a very interesting society from what Arne has shown me of it. I just love the attitude towards the sharing of the burdens of society that they have. It seems so equitable, but I'm worried about their demand that everyone in society needs to be ready for battle at all times. It seems like such a harsh demand._

_Arne's Notes: The Uskarlings have endured for tens of thousands of years and shall endure for tens of thousands of years more. Harder than the Herskald we wear as armour, older than the mountains of home, stronger than the sword of Oldoxyr the World Cleaver. We are warriors, explorers, poets, thinkers, revolutionaries, and artists._

**Consolidated Headlines and Article Excerpts**

Local Level News: Private: Internal Magnus Academy Bulletin: Clan Grendakal representatives hopes to initiate Arne Skjoldr

After discovering the survival of the sole son of Gyda and Erik Skjoldr, the Clan Speakers of Grendakal at the Magnus Academy have agreed on a motion to put Arne; or Vadzidylk to use the warrior name given to him by the clan seer who oversaw his birth; through some of the trials that he has missed in his time away from the embrace of his clan, should he wish to formally join his clan now that he is old enough to be considered ready for battle in Uskarling culture. While it is unclear to the exact degree that he has been augmented, it is expected that he will easily pass the trials based on what evidence exists of his combat capabilities. An event that the seer who had originally given him his warrior name and accompanied his mother during her birthing of the young Skjoldr looks forward to overseeing to ensure that he walks the path with the same honour and dignity that his mother did.

_Samus' Notes: Aww, I hope he does well in his initiations. c:_

_Arne's Notes: Oh...well...I hope I'm ready, I think I'm ready at least._

International News: Engenoid: Republican Triumph: Rantik Mechanical Swarm entering Styrmandin Galaxy

The Rantik Mechanical Swarm, classified as a category-A aggressive hegemonic swarm known for forcibly uploading of cyberizing other life forms and intelligences it encounters has started to enter the Styrmandin Galaxy, putting forces there on high alert in the hopes of driving the swarm back out of the galaxy. Active for over what is estimated to be roughly three billion years based on its first recorded mention in Chozo histories, the Rantik has been diminished from its prior glory days by the progenitors, but has managed to find ways to survive and plague the universe time and time again despite numerous efforts to eradicate them. With much of the attention of the Engenoid Union focused on the Rantik, many are questioning as to whether the embattled Union can deal with Kriken, Ivasti, or Space Pirate interests Styrmandin galaxy that are already taking advantage of the redeployment of forces to deal with the Rantik. The Alliance of Democratic Star Nations has offered its support to their Engenoid allies in these trying times as well in the hopes of propping their comrades up against the Swarm and the opportunists.

_Samus' Notes: Well, that is something roughly three billion light-years away, but this was marked in Trace's files of interest. Which means that he regards this as important, which means I have to as well._

_Arne's Notes: I feel somewhat drawn to the swarm, maybe I'm supposed to put a stop to it? There's a lot about the duties of the inheritors and ultimas that I'm not very familiar with._

International News: Omdyni: People's Investigation: Kriken activity in Black-Eye galaxy intensifies 

The Arkitan Imperial State has in recent days massively increased the flow of its special forces into the black eye galaxy in the search for what might be progenitor relics based on unconfirmed reports by investigators who have managed to break the veil of Kriken secrecy. While this cannot be verified at the moment, it has lead to a major mobilisation order for reservists in the Black Eye Galaxy who are preparing to repel the Kriken incursion force pressing into their space. Already significant skirmishing has begun between the military forces of the Imperial State and thE Omdyn, with attempts to raise protest against the Imperial government falling on deaf ears and the threat of intensifying containment efforts against the Krikens being raised; though as the state of war between the Imperial State and the Omdyn has never ceased since first contact; there is little expectation of any diplomatic solution. Galactic Battlefleet Commander Fiercer than Most has promised a significant retaliation if the Krikens do not withdraw.

_Samus' Notes: Oh no! All-out war between major powers at this point in history would do nothing but slaughter multitudes. I'm hoping if we put a stop to Trace's plan mass death can be avoided._

_Arne's Notes: A massive amount of life is at stake, but I don't think anything short of stopping Trace from getting what he wants and embarrassing him is going to get him to stop._

National News: Omdyni: Tribune of the Populace: New Omdyn Premier elected to helm Supreme Council

Following the recent general elections across the Omdyn, the Supreme Council has a new Premier in the form of the Synthetic Conscious Mind-Spider known as Andarastim Stylxikt of the member Republic of the Xakil Democratic Council Omnipragmatist Republic, replacing the incumbent Haestomol Vagrami. Representing a movement that seeks to more aggressively respond to threats by external powers while also maximising technological development and the bolstering of the quality of life throughout the Omdyn to allow for outlying spaces to enjoy the same quality of life as the core regions while still improving the core; Andarastim's central executive council is formed with an overwhelming mandate and the approval of the general populace. While her term is to start immediately, she is expected to face her first test in the form of yet another flare-up in conflicts with the Imperial state of Arkatik.

_Samus' Notes: I'm always concerned when a more war-hungry leadership is chosen by the populace, but from what I understand the ODCOR is nothing if not eminently democratic. We'll see how she performs soon, I'm hoping my fears are unrealised._

_Arne's Notes: She seems to be someone my father held in tremendous regard in particular, while my mother was somewhat cooler in her opinion of her. I'll need to monitor them closely to gauge the shifts they'll bring about._


End file.
